Walking On Eggshells
by icecreamlova
Summary: Love isn't easy. Nothing worth it ever is. But if secrets haunted your shared past, would you be able to trust again? If your first try ended in tragedy, could you find the courage to love again? 10: The true meaning of sacrifice. Maya drops a bombshell.
1. June 11st, 2027: Prologue

**Walking On Eggshells  
**1. Prologue  
_June 11th, 2027_

- : -

When Phoenix first started working under Mia Fey, she used to lock herself away into her office for an hour each day without explanation. Phoenix had accepted it as a simple quirk, because he respected the woman who had cleared his name and unmasked Dahlia Hawthorne for the murderer she was. It wasn't until he set away an afternoon to sort through Mia's belongings with his new assistant, that they discovered a series of sealed letters to a man named Diego. It wasn't until three years later, and a trial that ended with tears of blood, that he realised that they were a bridge to a time when things had been simpler.

After the fateful trial, he had supported Maya's crusade to bury the man named Diego Armando next to the grave that held the once-heiress to a legacy of reaching between worlds. They'd celebrated their success in a visit to the headstones of the two former defense lawyers, standing side by side like steady, grey guardians of the hidden treasures buried beneath the surface of the earth. Beneath the achingly bare limbs of the oak tree that marked Mia and Diego's final resting places, Maya had given him the first hint of struggles about to come.

"Do you think she's happy now?" Maya had asked quietly, laying a trembling hand on Mia's gravestone.

"...I think so," Phoenix had said. Then, "Can you sense her?"

Maya had shivered, though it was no longer cold, with the warm rush of air that settled into frozen nooks and crannies with the coming of spring. "No. She's been fading since the trial... I guess you've moved on, sis."

Moving on.

Moving forward.

It was odd the hold the past could have on a person; man or woman, thrilling prodigy of a lawyer or emotionally tough spirit medium. Sometimes, it was much easier retracing the path one had taken to reach the present, agonizing eternally over the choices one had made, than to turn one's eyes to the future with new wisdom and face what was to come. Phoenix could understand that need; the letters, the quiet afternoons, the moments Mia gazed into a cup of dark coffee and seemed to be staring through time and space, at a point years into the past.

It was far easier to look back and try to push blame on the shoulders of involved parties than to use what one had gained to charter a course forward into the unknown.

When Iris had stalked out of the Wrights' apartment, Phoenix had not been able to bring himself to move for long minutes after the door closed with a strangely loud click behind her. Silence rang in the air, so heavy it felt like a solid weight across his chest. He'd been rooted to the spot, and might have stayed there longer had Trucy not rushed home soon after.

She burst into the room, breathless with exertion. "What happened, Daddy? I just saw Iris, and..."

She trailed off, catching the look on his face, and hadn't the heart to bring it up after that.

One week later, the badge that arrived within the mail to herald a triumphant return to a career he loved felt--foolishly, as Franziska would have said--like a gift bought with the promise of Iris's absence.

There were celebrations, breathless congratulations from the various friends and acquaintances he had gathered about him through the years; the loss of his attorney's badge hadn't discouraged colourful characters from sweeping into his life. Today, though--the evening of the eleventh of June, 2027--was the first time the various people who had shaped his life had gathered together again.

They were quite literally gathered together, squeezed like tinned sardines, for Phoenix had gradually found his way to the piano tucked in the corner of Borscht Bowls, and taken his familiar space in front of the KEYBOARD OF DOOM. They'd hurried to the other side of the restaurant.

One would think that this was enough to deter Phoenix from expressing his sadly dormant artistic instinct, but much to the dismay of several of his guests, well, it wasn't.

Phoenix's hand trailed down the plastic keys of the restaurant's shiny new piano. He pressed experimentally down on one of the black keys, wondering idly what note it represented, although he did not truly register the sound that vibrated through the half empty Borscht Bowl. They surface was smooth and unfamiliar beneath his fingers.

Sitting there made him think of how he had once promised Iris, in a joke that had been taken seriously, that he would play for her.

Quite a great deal had reminded Phoenix of Iris, and of their argument, over the last week. Her accusations rang in his mind despite his attempts to push away the conflict that arose when he thought of the woman he knew so well. Phoenix knew this was almost certainly due to lingering guilt--after State vs. Enigmar, eight years ago now, everything in the office had reminded him of Mia, of Maya, and of how the promises he had made to Miles Edgeworth to always find the truth had become stilted.

Phoenix had contemplated an apology--and he wasn't above making one, in order to reconcile, and THEN work through the issue of who was to blame--but he wasn't quite sure how to, in this case, or if he should. Some part of him wondered if he wanted to. It was far easier to keep procrastinating, lobbing excuses to himself and to the inquisitive stares of other people (wondering what he should have done differently).

(There had been nudges, yes, from concerned friends, especially when the party started and they moved off topic from Phoenix's successful bar test. There had been few variations. 'Figure it out,' had been the general gist of it, but no one made an effort to go further, and Trucy and Pearls had disappeared off somewhere that morning and weren't back yet.)

Of course, Larry Butz -- or, Laurice "Tact? What is tact?" Deauxnim -- had not been around in the week since the argument, so it was almost inevitable that he would say something now that he had the chance to.

Larry left the company of an exasperated-looking Miles Edgeworth in order to glide through the tables separating him from the piano corner. He left quite a stir in his wake, but, surprisingly, paused only once--to overwhelm a terrified Vera Misham with a loud, boisterous greeting. Larry looked every bit the scatterbrained artist he was, with his paint-dabbed pink sweater, and an ignorantly cheerful smile that served to make other people laugh at the expense of his dignity. It made Phoenix laugh too, quietly and absently. The past few years had given Phoenix more of an appreciation of the person his friend was.

"Niiiiick," Larry trilled, "why are you sulking in the corner like a loser?"

Amazingly, despite his volume, his words seemed to drown away in the ambient chatter of the restaurant.

Phoenix lifted his hands off the plastic keys, and turned to fully face his childhood friend. "I don't know what you're talking about, Larry."

If Larry was momentarily taken in by the outright lie, he moved past it quickly enough--sidetracked, instead. "It's LAURICE, not Larry. LAURICE."

"Do you need something?" Phoenix said pointedly. "Because I'm not spotting you any cash."

Larry actually looked insulted by this insinuation.

"Don't look at me like I'm a hobo," he begged melodramatically for a moment, as if tears were about to run down his face. Recovering quickly, he crossed his arms and tipped his head to one side in thought. "Right! Yeah, I have something to say to you, you--you--"

Sighing, Phoenix reached languidly below the piano stool. His fingers fumbled until they closed around the smooth, familiar top of a bottle of grape juice. The other hand snagged a glass.

It was going to be a long night.

"--you vow-breaker!"

The glass half-filled with juice, and the purple waterfall still pouring, Phoenix blinked. He had not expected that.

"What was that?" he asked, after a slight pause, setting down his bottle before the glass overflowed.

This time, Phoenix was certain that crocodile tears glinted at the corners of Larry's eyes, as he clutched his hands before his chin. "You forgot?"

"I... uh..." Phoenix faltered and, much to his mortification, was forced to admit defeat to Larry. "Yes."

The blooming flower that Larry Butz sought to impersonate seemed to droop at this unwelcome news.

"So... so you didn't plan with Iris to stay away from the party?" Larry pressed urgently.

Phoenix's hand stilled on the glass, but he wasn't sure why he was surprised. This was Larry after all.

"No," he said curtly, without looking up.

The surface of the glass was smooth and cold under his fingers.

His knuckles were turning white.

If he pressed any harder, he felt like it would shatter.

But this was Larry Butz, who was oblivious to little signs; he was the one person, too, who would barrel on even if he did notice.

As evidenced by the one-eighty change in demeanour once he realised he hadn't been forgotten once again. The poker player in Phoenix noted the changes. Oh, and the bold thumbs-up pointed in Phoenix's direction was a big clue as well, but he couldn't be certain.

It did not matter that Phoenix was curt, because Larry filled the silence for him. "I KNEW I could count on you, Nick! Edgey fell in love as well, but he won't say anything... just remember how you fell in love, and then tell me your innermost secrets. Easy!"

As suddenly as he had come, Larry turned abruptly and flounced off again--presumably to continue bugging Edgeworth for the illicit dealings of his love life.

A short laugh burst out of Phoenix, startling even himself.

Really?

_"Remember how you fell in love?"_

It was different from the other advice, but... How was it that everything at the party seemed to revolve around the theme of trying to give Phoenix love advice, even when it was for personal profit?

Phoenix had hoped, when Larry seemed so desperate to talk, that the conversation would head elsewhere, but Larry had always been a romantic at heart. His moderately successful picture book series had led to the conception of something new -- information for which he was bugging Phoenix and Iris, and, apparently, Edgeworth and his unknown suitor of dubious existence, to supply.

His uncharacteristic brooding was smothered by the sound of shifting skirts. There was a flicker of violet in the corner of his vision, which made him freeze for an instant before he realised it was not Iris.

He was up in an instant and striding across the room, nevertheless, when a chair slid out and its occupant shot up.

"Mr. Wright!"

Apollo's conversation partners broke off when the younger defense attorney spoke, looked up, then looked away so pointedly that Phoenix was convinced of a conspiracy.

From somewhere, Phoenix managed to pull up a relaxed smile. "Hm?"

He braced himself for another bout of advice, but as always, Apollo Justice startled him. The young man stared at him piercingly for a moment.

"Never mind," he muttered, sitting down again.

Phoenix watched for a moment as Apollo engaged Vera in conversation with surprising tact. He and Trucy had taken the lion's share of acclimating her to a world where her father had died. It brought back bittersweet memories of visiting Iris in prison, or even earlier, or showing his Dollie around campus.

_Remember how you fell in love._

Phoenix kept walking until he reached the Spirit Medium's side and took a seat.

She barely looked up.

"I didn't think you were coming, Maya," he said, after a slight pause.

She did look up then, smiling half-heartedly. "You know me, Nick. Always busy until I'm not."

Phoenix frowned. "Kurain again? Is that why Pearls isn't here?"

Her eyes flicked down, and she clasped her hands before her. "Something like that." He had once counted her as the person who knew him best, and the one closest to him, but he couldn't read her at all. "Well, no, not exactly." Before Phoenix could press, she changed the subject. "I talked to Iris."

The mood changed.

"She's at Hazakura," Maya said unnecessarily, when it seemed Phoenix wouldn't reply. "You made her cry," she added. "I should be angry at you for making a pretty lady -- my cousin -- cry."

"But you're not?" Phoenix smiled humourlessly.

"I--" Something changed on Maya's face. She turned, dark eyes searching his face for something. Despite all this time, it still shocked Phoenix when he met the serious gaze; seven years had changed her, despite her continued enthusiasm about children's television. "She was crying, but you're not smiling either. You know, it's all right to cry, even if you are a man."

"That's got nothing to do with it!" Phoenix insisted.

One thing that hadn't changed about Maya was the way she thought; blowing this way and that, like a summer storm. "Do you love her, Nick?"

Her eyes were dead set on his.

Phoenix didn't answer out loud.

"I made a promise," Maya murmured, to herself. "But I need to hear your answer first."

"...What promise?" Phoenix had a bad feeling about it.

She fiddled with the bright red charm around her neck.

"Is it worth it?" she asked, instead of answering. "Falling in love? Chasing after the person you love for all this time?"

Had Maya been reading Maggey's romance novels again?

"Weigh up the pros and cons for each side, but use your heart to decide what's more important, and not your mind, for once. If it is... remember why you fell in love and try and resolve the argument. If not..." she shrugged.

He sat still, letting the advice flow over him, because it couldn't be as simple as that ('All that sulking for nothing?' the new, cynical part of him chuckled darkly) and yet it was.

Arguments, like battles at court, except there was no precedence for the wall-shaking argument. He could not rely on the past to provide an example of what to do. He had no knowledge.

But when had he ever, EVER let that stop him before?

Maya's voice was much more convincing than Larry's. "Remember why you fell in love," she had said. It was like opening the floodgates.

_'I pray for your safety on this dark, cold night.'_

_'You were always too good for me.'_

_'I hope you can forgive me one day... Feenie.'_

Phoenix did not have knowledge, but he could have wisdom.

He barely saw Maya trailing off, and the sigh when she saw the look on his face. She looked away.

_'You really are the person I always thought you were.'_

_'When I really needed your help, and you knew it, you were there.'_

_'I won't let you fall.'_

It was the first step: to look at the past and try and find a way to the future. He was so caught up, he didn't notice when Maya's eyes flitted to the entrance, where a woman was hesitating on the threshold.

- : -

_TBC_


	2. There's Someone I Want You To Meet

_**Previously**_

_...Quite a great deal had reminded Phoenix of Iris, and of their argument, over the last week. Her accusations rang in his mind despite his attempts to push away the conflict that arose when he thought of the woman he knew so well..._

_...Maya's voice was much more convincing than Larry's. "Remember why you fell in love__**,**__" she had said. It was like opening the floodgates..._

***

**Walking On Eggshells  
**2. There's Someone I Want You To Meet  
_November 1st, 2023_

- : -

It was a very strange thing, Trucy reflected, that this was her first time visiting the Penitentiary with her father, especially considering his former job. (It did not count her habit if running off and exploring, and her father locating her after a long absence.)

"There's someone I want you to meet," he had said earlier that day, after clients had come and gone, largely satisfied with the outcomes of their trips.

Trucy had known for a long time that there were parts of his life Daddy kept from her, deliberately or not. Some old decision, reached when she'd first come to stay with Phoenix, told her, rather immaturely, that adults were like that; they lied without thinking about it, never quite realising it themselves, and never said what was on their minds without pretending. Trucy didn't complain, because she made a living out of lying -- telling untruths by omission -- and her father had before her, much to the delight of hundreds of children.

Still, she had been curious when she discovered an old photo of two vaguely familiar girls, one much older than Trucy had been then, the other younger, both dressed in strange, old-fashioned purple robes and laughing. Phoenix -- looking like he'd just left the courthouse -- stood behind them, sheepish, but there had been a spark in his eyes that had been missing ever since the terrible trial four years ago.

She had been curious when that famous prosecutor, Mr. Edgeworth, visited -- not far in the past at all -- and he and Daddy exchanged words over a long conversation that carried late into the night. Trucy was sure they had waited until she nodded to sleep before talking about anything that actually carried weight.

She had been curious when Phoenix excused himself once every few weeks, leaving her practicing her tricks for a couple of hours, to visit someone he had never told her about.

Today, Trucy knew she was going to get some answers.

She smiled at the prison guard, and he returned it, along with a suspicious look at Phoenix. Apparently, this guard hadn't been around when her father, and not Mr. Gavin, was the best defense attorney in town. Eventually, he nodded and stepped aside to let the two of them pass.

"Why didn't he recognise you, Daddy?" Trucy asked Phoenix. "He's been working here for AGES."

"Iris transferred here from a more secure Penitentiary just recently," answered her father, approaching the receptionist and speaking quietly to her.

Iris. Trucy rolled the name around in her head. Was her father's friend as delicate as Trucy thought someone with the name 'Iris' should be? Though admittedly, Trucy had learnt, from the number of colourful names of people around her, that you couldn't judge a person by what they were called.

"Is she going to be my new mommy?" Trucy teased, fisting both hands under her chin and leaning forward in excitement.

Phoenix looked surprised at her question. Well, what else was she supposed to think if he found it important enough to introduce them while this Iris was in prison? It was a not-rigged toss-up between 'dangerously criminal' and 'dangerously intimate'.

"Let's discuss that later," said Phoenix, staring down at the floor so Trucy couldn't see his face.

They were directed into one of the Penitentiary's meeting rooms and told to wait. Trucy, who didn't like sitting still too often, bounced up and down impatiently. She was uncharacteristically nervous; Daddy's friend was obviously someone important to him, and she wondered what this woman was going to be like.

"Don't worry, Trucy," Daddy said. There was a hint of a smile in his voice. "I'm sure she's as nervous to meet you as you are to meet her."

Right. She was a magician. She performed in front of crowds regularly and had no problems with helping Daddy cheat (unofficially!) while playing poker. She was the one who'd been living with Phoenix for the past four years.

Just as Trucy had taken a seat, the door opened again, from the other side of the room this time, and their visitor was ushered in by a guard.

Trucy didn't recognise the woman. She'd secretly suspected that Iris was, maybe, one of those mysteriously familiar girls in Phoenix's old photos, but she'd been wrong. Iris was of a similar colouring to one of the girls, with her wavy black hair, dark eyes, and pale skin; but without the cheerful exuberance -- so apparent in the photo of another girl -- her perfectly symmetrical features, despite being absolutely lovely, was dull and ordinary in Trucy's world of bright colours. (Of course, it could have been because prison had a tendency to strip away layers of varnish.) She was about Daddy's age, but she looked soft and gentle, and Trucy wondered what she was doing in the Penitentiary. What crime could Iris have committed?

There was a pause, while Iris seated herself and watched them both. A wide smile crossed her face when she looked at Daddy, and between the relief and surprise there, Trucy felt the first inkling that her joke might have been closer to truth than she'd imagined. Her smile faded slightly when Iris looked at her, and Trucy wondered why. Iris looked--nervous.

"Trucy," Daddy said, his eyes lingering on the woman, "I'd like you to meet Iris. She's an old friend of mine. Iris, this is my daughter, Trucy."

"It's nice to meet you," Iris said. Her voice was as quiet and gentle as she looked, and clearly nervous. "Phoenix has told me quite a bit about you."

"It's nice to meet you too," Trucy said grudgingly. Despite herself, though, she was curious. "What did he say? About me?"

Iris tilted her head thoughtfully, like she was deciding something. "Well, Trucy, that you are a genius on stage, and getting in trouble. He's told me that you play the piano better than he does." She smiled at Phoenix. "I've never heard him play, but I'm sure that makes you really good."

Trucy had to laugh. "You've NEVER heard Daddy play? Well, you're in for a surprise, then. Mr. Gavin -- that's Kristoph Gavin, Daddy's friend -- says it's like a cat screeching. That good. I'm going to record that sound and sell it to Cats, in case they want it."

Iris blinked in confusion, which was how it should be. "Oh."

In the corner of her eye, Trucy could see Daddy's mouth curving into a lazy, amused smile.

"Did he tell you about what I do for a living?" asked Trucy, barrelling on ahead.

"That you're an excellent magician," Iris said quietly, "and that you bring home the money. I'd love to see, some time. Maybe in a few months."

"Don't be ridiculous!" Trucy eyed the guard thoughtfully, her business sense ticking. She rummaged in one of her pockets and felt the soft crackle of old paper. "I'll show you something now. You don't mind, do you?" she asked the guard, flicking out the edges of her cape with her left hand. "I won't try any REAL tricks."

The guard frowned suspiciously, but agreed.

Trucy was aware of Daddy's eyes shifting from her to Iris, judging them, though she wasn't sure on what. She concentrated on the trick. "You see this bowl? Mr. Eldoon gave it to me. He owns the local noodle stand where Daddy and I eat out. It's solid--you hear it clashing against the table? Now... Allakazam! Allakazim!" Trucy blew on the bowl, tossed it in the air, and in one smooth movement concealed it again. "Where'd it go?"

The guard looked mildly interested; Iris much more so.

"That's amazing," she said, "and probably very useful. Certainly no less so than talking to spirits."

"You bet," Trucy said, ignoring the last comment. "And if you want to see more," Trucy added to the guard, pulling out a flyer for Wright Talent Agency and handing it to him, "For this startling display, cats shooting out of guns, Mr. Hat and further examples of blatant defiance of physics, come to Wonder Bar. I work there every night!"

What she hadn't quite expected was to hear Iris laughing. She'd covered her mouth with a delicate fist, and was facing down, like she was curling in on herself, but her giggles escaped past the barrier and bounced around the room. Trucy couldn't help but smile in return, her right hand rising to tap her knuckles against her blue silk hat sheepishly. Even Daddy looked surprised.

"That's amazing," Iris said again, but she sounded much more sincere. "You really are a great parent, Phoenix. You always have been."

Trucy gasped in surprise, a small, white-gloved hand rising to cover her shocked mouth, and turned expectantly toward her father. She should have been used to revelations about Phoenix by now, but... "You've had children before?"

Phoenix looked unexpectedly flustered.

"Not quite," he hedged.

"He's acted as a surrogate father at least once before," Iris said. Her eyes never left Trucy's face, but Trucy had the feeling Iris' next words were not meant for her. "He was the closest to a father my sister had ever known, and he still is, especially with all that's happening now. I've never had a chance to repay him."

"You already have," drawled Phoenix, back to being relaxed, though not precisely care-free.

"He's modest, too," Iris said to Trucy with the sort of smile usually accompanied by a wink and a warning of a practical joke being pulled. "He acts as though everything good, like praise -- among other gifts -- in his life are temporary blessings he doesn't deserve."

"I've just learnt to count my blessings," Phoenix denied. He held up a thumb. "This is always reserved for Trucy."

"And the other fingers?" Trucy asked in his general direction, but, like Iris, directed her words to the other in the room.

"Covert government connections," Iris decided, "and such advantages as a four-year-long streak of good luck, ability to survive falling off a bridge, and connections to both former and current government officials."

Trucy glanced at her father. He was focused on Iris. She could not read his face without consciously focusing, and she would never do that. She wouldn't be getting any more out of him.

Trucy was not unaware that most of their conversation had passed over her head, and she made no further attempt to pry any further into the matter. She knew the meaning of privacy. Rather than perceiving walls, however, Trucy saw a golden opportunity to dig into a different aspect of Daddy's past, and seized it with both hands.

"So, Iris..." Trucy said, tapping her chin and wondering what she could ask. She picked up question and went with it -- that was the way her mind worked, fast and spontaneous. "How did you meet Daddy?"

She was surprised with the rush of old guilt that washed across Iris's face. The light atmosphere vanished.

Iris stared at the table, and clenched her fists. She glanced momentarily at Phoenix, seemed to take strength from what she saw there, and answered.

"It was eleven years ago," Iris admitted. The blunt truth she said next shocked Trucy. "We met at Ivy University. My sister wanted something very badly from Phoenix... badly enough she was willing to do anything to get it back. I told her I would get it for her." She smiled sadly, and Trucy searched her mind for a clue of what it was this sister of Iris' would have wanted from Daddy. "She agreed. I found him after I took her place as a literature student. I approached him with that intent, you know, but...."

--But something changed.

But, Trucy realised in a rush, they fell in love. She wasn't blind. She could see it, though both had taken pains not to make it too obvious; maybe Daddy thought she would need to be introduced gradually, like weaning a baby off milk. She could see the way Daddy's eyes lingered on Iris's face, the softness there -- soft of like when Trucy pretended to be asleep and peeked out from beneath the covers to see him watching her -- and even without her abilities Trucy wouldn't have missed it. That joke, find me a new mommy, had become shockingly real.

"Why didn't you ever tell me about this, Daddy?" Trucy asked curiously. "I thought your time in University was boring."

"It was anything but," Phoenix said, glancing for a moment at Iris. "I'll tell you about it some time, Trucy."

Trucy watched Iris too, though she wasn't as obvious about it as Iris was, watching her in turn. Her face was tentative, waiting for some judgment, like she'd been walking on eggshells the entire time and wasn't sure if she'd miss-stepped and crushed them. Trucy remembered how nervous Iris had sounded when she'd spoken for the first time, yet Iris had admitted all the same that her meeting with Phoenix had been planned from the start; something unflattering she'd hardly want her sweetheart's daughter to know.

Unloading something so private told Trucy that Iris might, quickly, become a serious fixture in her life--and it told her more.

Trucy was big on appearances, as any magician had to be to pull off their tricks, and the lack of a mask here... earned Iris her respect.

"That's all right," Trucy said. "I'm sure Iris will tell me about it later."

"Of course," Iris agreed.

Between Iris and Phoenix passed a look that wasn't quite tender, but full of relief; a look that said, 'one hurdle passed'. There were secrets here, Trucy knew, lying in the past, and hurdles that probably hadn't been quite so easily overcome. Maybe Iris would tell her about those too.

"I need to go prepare for my show," Trucy said. "Oh, don't worry about me Daddy. I'm sure you and Iris have a lot to discuss. I'll take the train."

After a moment, Phoenix nodded lazily, and sat back down again. As Trucy left the room, she heard them talking in low voices, thoughtful and happy. It wasn't bad work, for half an hour, Trucy reflected. She had visited the Penitentiary with Daddy; she had learnt something about his past; and she had, possibly, met someone who would become her new mother.

- : -

**TBC**

_R & R, please_

**Note: **the prologue was a flash-forward, and the rest of the story works like a series of related one-shots about Phoenix & Iris and their relationship.


	3. March 14th, 2019: A Portrait of Iris

_After all those false starts, I think I owe you guys some actual Phoenix & Iris interaction._

_Note: this chapter takes place about a month before State vs. Enigmar._

*******

**Walking On Eggshells  
**3. A Portrait of Iris  
_March 14th, 2019_

- : -

If nothing else, Phoenix could take comfort that Pearl -- and Maya -- were away at Kurain Village rather than accompanying him to the meeting. Edgeworth was back in the country, but was occupied after hectic days of cases. The last time, the whole gang had come, and Phoenix had been given no time to talk to Iris in private, and ask her the burning questions that clawed at his throat. Apparently, though, if Pearl was to be believed, he'd spent the entire time staring at Iris, and not enough staring at Maya. Or so she explained while he tried to plug his nosebleed from her amazingly strong slap.

Finally, finally, Phoenix was visiting Iris -- alone.

Maybe he would be able to get his questions properly answered.

Iris was waiting for him in the visiting room. Like always, Phoenix felt that familiar tilt of his stomach just looking at her. His heart seemed to jump into his throat for a moment, and a cold wave washed over him. He had to remind himself, again, that this wasn't Dahlia Hawthorne -- that THIS was the woman he had fallen in love with all those years ago.

He didn't -- and probably couldn't -- even try to deny, though, that she was beautiful, so Phoenix doubted the tilt would ever really go away.

"Thank you for visiting me," Iris said quietly.

"It's good to see you again," Phoenix said. "How's... uh... how are you?"

'What sort of stupid question was that?' he asked himself. Iris was in jail; was he supposed to expect a positive answer?

"Better now that you're here," said Iris. She saw Phoenix's wince, and added gently, "It's not really that different from Hazakura Temple, you know. Even at the temple, I only had Sister Bikini as company, and I never left it--much--so the confinement doesn't bother me. You don't need to worry about me, Feenie."

Her cheeks blushed becomingly as she spoke; six years, Phoenix reminded himself, was a long time, and many things could -- did -- change, such as the fading of her old, comfortable habit of calling him by his nickname.

"Prison can't be a happy place, even if this is only low-security," Phoenix murmured.

"It is only four years," Iris reminded him, quietly. "It could have been worse for 'accomplice for murder'. I know that much. Mr. Armando told me," she added before Phoenix could ask. "He was very explicit that it could be much worse, but I suppose he needn't have worried. You saved us."

"I couldn't save you from this," Phoenix said helplessly.

Iris shook her head.

"You already did," she told him gently, but firmly. She leaned forward slightly, so Phoenix could see the harsh light of the penitentiary play across the double braid that pinned her silky, black hair back.

"Phoenix... six years ago, when I left Ivy University, I left you, and I left her, even though I promised myself I would help you both -- even though I told myself, when I saw you, or my sister, 'I won't let you fall.' Last month, Mr. Armando came to me with a plan, and I accepted it. I hid the body; I lied to you again. Even if I tried to forget this, and retreated to the mountains... I know from experience I wouldn't be able to move on. Now... I can."

'Experience?' Phoenix wondered in the silence. Then, because he had nothing better to say, "Will you tell me about it -- those past six years?"

"Of course," she said after a moment. "What do you want to know?"

This was his chance, Phoenix reminded himself. He'd lain awake late last night, eyes staring unblinkingly at the smooth ceiling of his bedroom, mentally listing the questions he wanted to ask; needed to be answered.

Questions such as, 'When did you find out about Morgan Fey's plans?'

Or, 'Why didn't you tell me anything about the danger Maya was in when I was up at Hazakura Temple?'

Or, even, 'What did Diego Armando ask you to do?'

They were practical questions, to clarify the blurred outline she'd sketched for them at Court; questions about other people, and how she had been connected to them, in order for him to get a deeper understanding about the terrible night. The answers could be vital.

(But he'd known, even then, laying the questions out one by one like a numbered list, that he was attempting to skirt he issue.)

But what came out of his open mouth was: "Why didn't you ever contact me?"

Perhaps, listening to Maya's steady breathing on the other side of the bedroom wall, Phoenix had been able to focus on the most solid of curiosities, in order to distract from what he really wanted to know. Iris, though... Iris had always prompted stupid, wonderful confession without lifting a finger.

The strange thing was, listening to the words ring in the air, and Iris try to find a comprehensible answer to his far-reaching question, Phoenix thought he might know the answer; or part of it, at least. Edgeworth's remarks on the acolyte had been brief, but revealing.

Iris, according to Edgeworth, had been running.

Iris, according to Edgeworth, had hoped that he would forget her after her sister's fall.

Iris, according to Edgeworth, had thought she could only hurt him -- never help him.

But Phoenix wanted to hear it in Iris' own words. It wasn't that he didn't trust Miles Edgeworth, but he, of all people, knew that listening to testimonies second-hand changed them, warped them, like people standing in a line and passing down a message in Chinese Whispers. Inevitably, the final result was a garbled, inept description, with only the faintest hint in phonetics of what the original had been.

Phoenix waited expectantly as Iris gathered her thoughts, quiet, downcast, but trying nonetheless -- for him.

'Why didn't you ever contact me?'

"I wanted to," she finally admitted, arm drifting protectively against her chest. She stared down, eyes flitting to the side. "Hazakura Temple's only public phone is near Dusky Bridge, and when I first returned, every time I walked across to check on an acolyte or to tend the gardens--Phoenix, I remembered your voice, and I wanted so much to hear it again. But there was one thing that stopped me, each and every time."

"What was it?" Phoenix asked immediately, planting his hands on the ledge in front of the window and leaning forward.

If she was startled by his obvious anticipation, Iris gave no sign. Guilt tainted her expression, glinted in the tears gathering in the corners of her eyes, and Phoenix remembered in alarm that he hadn't meant to make Iris cry.

"I--uh--you don't--"

Iris shook her head sharply before he could retract his question. As if the sudden action strengthened her resolve, she was able to whisper: "Fear, Phoenix. Fear."

Fear? He opened his mouth to speak, but didn't get a chance.

Iris said softly, "I'm sorry, Phoenix. You see the light in everyone, but I wasn't as strong as you think I was. She was always the strong one," Iris said, and a chill ran down Phoenix's spine at the mere mention of Dahlia Hawthorne. "Me... I couldn't face you after everything I had done; all the lies I had told. I couldn't even do something as simple as picking up the phone and dialing your number, to tell you I existed. The only thing I could do was stay away and hope that you could move on -- and I failed even at that."

Phoenix took a good look at the picture Iris was painting of herself: weak and afraid, like a cowardly child, who had retreated to the mountains and pretended that she had done nothing, and that the world didn't exist outside her doorstep.

Phoenix took a good look at the picture Iris was painting of herself, and realized it wasn't completely wrong.

But that didn't mean it was right, either.

"You helped me move on, instead," Phoenix corrected. He stopped, struggling to find a way to phrase his words to create the proper effect; finally, he said, "Even though you didn't want to meet me again, or couldn't bring yourself to, when I really needed your help, and you knew it, you were there. How could I ask for more that you haven't already given? You've repaid me in every way."

Iris stared -- stared, wide-eyed, disbelieving, relieved, and a hundred emotions ranging from astonishment, to exasperation, to gratitude, like a throw-back to the trial a month ago when he told her his opinion of his love had never changed.

"Phoenix--"

"I'm not a lawyer for nothing," Phoenix said, before Iris could try and tug more blame on her shoulders, "and my evidence contradicts what you just said. The girl I fell in love with in Ivy University would have done anything to keep me safe." His voice growing heated, he said, "The woman I met again at Hazakura Temple almost gave up her life, and the love of other people, to save someone else. Do you think those actions are the marks that single out cowards, Iris? Are you really trying to tell me that it was only because of guilt?"

She was staring again by the time the passionate speech ended. If it was possible, her eyes widened even further, until they seemed to take up half her face, but the comic nature was wiped away by the solemn atmosphere.

This time, she didn't cry. Iris met his eyes determinedly, for perhaps the first time in their meeting, There was a spark of the woman who had taken on a different life in order to save her sister's mind and soul.

"You were always too good for me," she said quietly.

Had the circumstances been different, less serious, Phoenix might have laughed at the irony. What had he thought, when they'd been dating, but the opposite? His friends had wondered, jokingly, why someone like Iris was dating the bumbling, sincere, but somewhat dense Phoenix Wright, and he had contemplated the questions himself more than once: why was someone as perfect as "Dahlia Hawthorne" deigning to give him a second glance?

After the terrible trial, six years ago, when Dahlia was unmasked as a demon and murderer, Phoenix had been horrified, and embarrassed, so he could be distracted from the PAIN. Withdrawing from everything on the other side of his dorm room door, he had told himself he should have seen this coming; it was only in some popular fantasy, where the world was single-layered, smooth and glossy like a magazine photograph, that their relationship had a chance of being anything close to real. Even though Dahlia's image had been forever destroyed, that deeply ingrained conviction she was completely out of his league remained untouchable.

The Iris he'd met at Hazakura Temple had seemed like a portrait of a lady; unflinchingly kind, perpetually gentle, and desperately, stunningly beautiful.

The Iris that Phoenix now saw, with clarity like the logic laid down step by step in court by Mia Fey, was the real person; kind, but naive; gentle, but afraid; lovely, and brave, but desperate and blinded. She was a woman who saw the good in everyone else, much like her accusation of him, but was so focused on what she'd done that she couldn't see past it, to the positives that had come of her actions.

It was as though she lived in two different worlds, past and present, guided by different rules altogether.

He didn't know this Iris, like he'd once thought he'd known his Dollie, but he could understand her--help her see the good in herself--and Phoenix had never been averse to helping the people he cared about.

So Phoenix told her, "I don't believe that, and neither should you. Promise me that, Iris."

"But..." she took one look at his face, and held back her intended words. "I -- I promise."

"Good," said Phoenix, satisfied.

He doubted she would be able to stay her thoughts every time, because Iris, by her own admission, had spent twenty years thinking herself weak. But he would be there for her, to bring her back, to save her like she'd saved Maya, like she'd kept him safe for six months from Dahlia's deadly schemes.

Phoenix promised it to himself in silence, wrapping the vow in moral thought and compassion.

'I will keep you safe.'

'I won't let you fall.'

- : -

**TBC**

_R & R, please. They make me write faster . . ._


	4. December 31st, 2026: A Night to Remember

_Thank you, my wonderful reviewers__**.** I'm sorry this chapter took longer to get out._

**Walking On Eggshells  
**4. A Night to Remember  
_December 31st, 2026_

- : -

It was nearing eight in the evening. The sky had darkened hours ago -- it was winter, after all. The inside of Wright Anything Agency, and the apartments tucked stealthily behind it, would have been brittle with ice, if Iris hadn't arrived back early and turned on the oil heaters. When Apollo and Trucy thundered up the dark stairs, shivering from a combination of excitement and cold, a delicious wave of heat flooded across their wind-chilled faces.

"I LOVE you, Iris," Trucy announced loudly, slamming the door behind her. Her shout echoed around the apartment. She dropped immediately onto a couch, draping over it like a warm sweater and knocking her top-hat askew.

Absently, Apollo bent down to pick it up. "Why don't you say that to me when I heat up the rooms?"

Trucy opened her eyes blearily. "Weren't my stamps and Gavinners' signed albums thanks enough?"

"Is that your excuse for storing them at my apartment?" Apollo asked dryly, flicking the hat onto Trucy's lap.

Trucy lifted her head up. She said, in all seriousness, "If you hate it so much, you should move in with us. You crash here all the time anyway. I'd have a little brother as well, then!"

"I'm older than you," Apollo pointed out. After a moment, he added, "And male. Maybe that's why I don't like the Gavinners."

"Oh, then I'll take them away, and we'll be even." Trucy said brightly. "I haven't heard Prince Dreamy's voice in so long..."

Apollo gave up in the face of such solid logic--and just when had Trucy actually begun calling Klavier by that wildly inaccurate name?--and went to find Iris. At least she would make sense, for she was distinctively immune to the silliness that Trucy exhibited and the strangeness Mr. Wright loved so much to flaunt around. Apollo had no doubt Iris was unique in her way, but she hid it much better.

Iris was in the kitchen, humming contentedly to herself as she worked. Her pen moved steadily to attack paperwork. She was like a vision of the sort of mother Apollo had imagined for himself, as a small child lying awake at night in a stranger's house, wondering where his parents were. He had dreamed of a beautiful, gentle woman who would love him unconditionally, comfort him when he was sad, and clasp his hand and raise him to live a normal life. He would tell himself that, perhaps, his mother had been in a tragic accident, but yearned to find him again.

Meeting Iris had reminded him of his childhood fancies, but, try as he did, he could not picture Iris as his mother, which was probably a good thing. She was good for Mr. Wright and Trucy, yet the role of the woman who would shape his life had changed, the shape warped into a strange mixture Apollo could not identify. He had, for instance, never fantasized spending a day his birth-mother at a nightmare of a mall, with innumerable shopping bags hung across his frame as he struggled to keep up with a determined woman and her charge...

"Hello, Apollo. Have you made enough progress for your case?" Iris asked, as he walked through the doorway.

Apollo sighed, draping himself across the chair across the square table from Iris like a warm sweater. He usually avoided emulating Trucy's dramatics (he had too many of his own to make into trademarks), but, in his tired state, it did not occur to him to sit up straight and stiff. "I... think so. But we still have a week before the trial date, and Trucy and I should be able to dig more up."

"The prosecution won't know what hit them," Iris agreed easily, replacing her pen. "I wish I could be here to see your Chords of Steel."

'It just doesn't sound right when someone else says it,' he decided.

To change the subject, Apollo leaned back on the hind legs of his chair, and asked, "Do you know when Mr. Wright will be back?"

Apollo knew he didn't imagine a slight stiffening of Iris's face, faint displeasure that was aimed at something he couldn't identify.

It took her a few moments to answer. "In twenty or so minutes."

Apollo studied Iris intently, though he was careful not to try and Perceive her. It was rude, and he didn't cheat like Trucy. "Is something the matter?"

Iris was still, for a second or two, except for the way her fingers fiddled with the pen she'd just set down--nervous, probably about Phoenix--and her eyes flicked up to meet his. He blinked determinedly to hide the uneasy feeling permeating his being; she didn't call him out on the way his eyes were straining, though he knew Iris probably noticed it.

"It's nothing," she said listlessly, finally. "Just a minor disagreement about timing that we resolved."

It was the truth, but not all of it; Apollo forcibly stuffed away the urge to press to find the truth--it wasn't a courtroom, and Iris wasn't his suspect--and bit his lip.

"I've known him so long," Iris said softly, as if to herself, "and sometimes, I still cannot read him."

Apollo shifted awkwardly, trying to figure out what to say. "I can't read him sometimes, despite my abilities," he ventured, "but I know he means well, even when he's joking."

"He always does," Iris sighed, just as the phone began blaring. Slowly, her eyes pulled back into focus. She strode across the kitchen and swiped it before Trucy could.

"Hello?"

Apollo made a soft sound of protest that died in his throat, when he realised that whoever was on the other end of the line was not a client. It also seemed to be for her--the day he didn't notice the way Iris turned away from him slightly, to create a gentle illusion of privacy, Apollo would turn in his badge and become a hobo.

The slight smile that crossed her face as she listened had nothing to do with it at all.

"Not yet... hm? Now?"

Iris turned to look at Trucy, and then at him.

"It's pretty late, Feenie... Uh-huh... uh-huh"--the second sound emitted with a faint inflection of sarcasm--"oh, all right... You too."

She ended the call and settled the phone back into its cradle; the one that Apollo had theorized was held together by glue and tape, until Trucy protested—how dare he only SUSPECT when it was CLEARLY held together that way? He could see Iris' bemused profile as she turned back to watch them.

"Um, Apollo," she asked, a little hesitantly, "do you mind watching Trucy for the night? I'm sure there's food in the fridge..."

Something outraged reared up in Apollo.

'I'm not your babysitter!' he thought, but did not say. It was squashed by a second sentiment. 'At least she asked. Besides, I've gone over most of the case. I don't really have anything else to do except my Chords of Steel workout, but the Judge might throw me out of court if I practise any more.'

Iris smiled at him, more forcefully this time; against his will, Apollo found the hard set of her jaw, at complete odds with her patient demeanour, and made an effort not to shiver.

"All right," he consented quickly.

This time, her smile was genuinely grateful. "Thank you."

In a flash, she had crossed the room and grabbed a larger overcoat. She pulled it over her soft jumper and jeans--it was COLD--as she walked out the door.

On the couch, Trucy slowly opened her eyes. Her laugh made Apollo jump.

"Do you know something?" he asked, suspiciously.

"I ALWAYS know something," she confirmed readily enough.

- : -

He was waiting outside Borscht Bowl Club a little impatiently, which would have made Iris laugh if she weren't already aware of the terrible quality of the food. Romantic escapade indeed. Nevertheless, the grape juice was supposed to be excellent, and Iris smiled inwardly as she realised this was the PERFECT chance to make him finally play.

"Prepare for an evening of entertainment," he told her, as she approached.

Iris frowned in mock-suspicion. "It's not an evening spent watching poker, is it?"

"No, no, I learnt my lesson," Phoenix assured her ruefully. "Never eat then play. Your opponent might get brained by your dinner partner. Or poisoned. Happens all the time."

They entered the restaurant, Iris drawing her caramel coat closer around her. Most restaurants tried to make their customers comfortable; this one attempted to drive them into the basement in order to get warm, so that they could be conned into playing poker. At least, with the rigorous revision Phoenix was undergoing in order to retake his bar exam, he no longer worked at the Borscht Bowl Club.

"Do I look like the sort of person who would kill someone?" she teased.

He pretended to hesitate. "I don't know. Let me see..." His fingers gently closed around hers, lifting them up, staring at each part of her hand with the concentration of a lawyer examining a crime scene--though he probably didn't brush his lips, teasingly, across pieces of evidence when he brought them close to his eyes, as he did with the back of her hand. "Are these the hands of a killer? The fingerprints might be different, but I see... omelets? Bottles? Aha! Food poisoning!"

Iris let her mouth drop open. "I resent that! My omelets are delicious--you said so yourself!"

But she was laughing, gleeful that they could joke about what had happened, like this. It hadn't always been so easy. Their conversations had often become stilted affairs during her days in prison, and the fiasco right after she'd first been released had only made it worse. To be able to speak unflinchingly of the past, or even acknowledging it openly, was something Iris had only dreamt about until recently--when they took to heart that precious second chance they'd been granted.

Although the boy did not know it, Apollo had been a huge contributor to the new ease. He would probably never figure it out. Phoenix had suggested that Apollo would either become unbearably smug---or, worse, revert back into the timid persona he'd worn upon first joining Wright Anything Agency--if he discovered he was responsible for a portion of his mentor's love life. Iris hadn't argued the point, although she disagreed.

She didn't bring it up now. She did not want to spoil the mood.

"What sort of entertainment do you have planned, Feenie?" she asked instead, as he led her--almost unconsciously--to his customary seat beside the piano.

There were a few customers already seated, and in the corner of her eye, Iris could see another pair entering the door, although their faces were turned away. Had the restaurant--and the title was dubiously earned, at that--suddenly become more popular than she credited? The unchanged atmosphere seemed to disagree with the possibility.

"I was just joking about that," her companion admitted flippantly, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. The familiar gesture brought an unexpected swoop of nostalgia to Iris--her stomach rolled, and memories flickered like segments of old film below her eyelids. The reminder of their younger days felt at complete odds when contrasted against his current appearance and that scruffy, unkempt, devil-may-care air. His characteristic spiky hair was hidden beneath a pastel-blue beanie, but at least, with Maya and Trucy's help, she had managed to force him to dress less like a hobo otherwise, and his clear, determined eyes were startling as ever.

"You'd better think of something," she informed him sternly, "or my hand might just slip the next time I cook..."

He looked vaguely amused. "You're not serious, are you?"

"I take pride in expressing my love for you," Iris said seriously. "It's just that sometimes my love gets very, very salty indeed."

"I'll bet it does," he admitted, but something about the way he said it made her blush.

She shook her head sharply, then, as if by accident, her eyes settled on the piano right behind him. "Actually, I know a more practical way to keep my food delicious..."

She smiled, in a way she wouldn't have dared--or known how to--a few years ago. It was a smile that made even the current Phoenix follow her gaze with trepidation.

"I KNEW I should have insisted to Enigmar to make it disappear," he grumbled.

"Well, it's here now," Iris said sweetly.

"Do you WANT to get kicked out?" he asked her, and she admired how straight his face was. It was almost as if he was being serious...

- : -

"Do they WANT to get kicked out?" Trucy exclaimed, a bit too loudly, but neither Iris nor Phoenix, fortunately, appeared to have noticed.

Nevertheless, Apollo was quick to pull her back into the stool, just in case either decided to turn around.

Trucy had been all for hiding behind some flowering pot, before Apollo pointed out that there was no way a plant would survive in the frigid interior of the restaurant. They'd settled instead for waiting until they were sure Mr. Wright and Iris were no longer paying attention, and then sneaking in. Now the sharp-eyed pair squatted in a side-bench, Trucy periodically poking her head out to take a look.

After soft notes began drifting across--it wasn't too bad, compared to Klavier's concerts--Apollo risked turning to take a look. He had been too tall to hide beneath the tables anyway, and his profile was familiar, so the risk was small.

It took a moment for him to bite back his laughter.

The look on Iris's face...

He couldn't hear the words, but he easily picked up the disbelief; she was staring.

And staring.

And staring.

Phoenix mangled the next section, and still she stared.

Finally, when the noise in the restaurant had died down, Iris placed a hand across Phoenix's arm to get him to stop. She was blushing--embarrassment, Apollo decided.

"Damn it, Daddy," Trucy murmured softly, beside him. "You're not going to do it outside, are you?"

"What?" Apollo turned to her, distracted.

She waved a hand to keep him quiet as the manager walked past, heading toward the piano. He was muttering under his breath.

Apollo was wholly unsurprised when the couple quickly rose and left, before the manager could arrive.

"Let's go--"

"But... we haven't paid," Apollo objected.

Trucy smiled at him. "Catch up soon," she trilled, leaving before he could protest again.

The waiting manager smiled at him with a gleam in his eye.

Grr... Wrights...

- : -

"What were you planning?" Iris asked eventually, rubbing her hands together to keep them warm.

He draped an arm around her and drew her closer before answering, wrapping her in the warmth of his body. "The park, but I guess it's too cold, and the romance lacking."

She leaned closer. "I could say the same of the restaurant, except you can actually see stars outside."

They stopped, by silent agreement, and stared up. The night was chilly, but extraordinarily clear, and silver lights gleamed steadily, barely winking, against the navy vault of sky. There was no moon, which made the stars as visible as they could be in a city surrounded by light.

"Do you remember dancing?" she asked, after a moment. "There was a shooting star, that night, at the university."

She felt, rather than saw, his smile, in the tone of his voice. "How could I forget?"

Iris blinked, reassured by the contentment in his words that he was not thinking about what had happened in the days immediately following. "I... guess you couldn't."

He was quiet, as they started walking again, more slowly this time.

"I kept thinking I'd seen you in town," he added, "and I was convinced it was a bad reaction to Coldkiller X since I knew you were back in Ivy University."

"That wasn't me," Iris said softly.

"I know," he assured her. "She wasn't as beautiful as you were."

She pulled away and leaned up, so her lips brushed his ear when she whispered. "I think there were enough lies from that day that you don't need to add another one."

He shuddered, the grip around her waist tightening. There was something odd in his voice when he reminded her, "We were thinking of the future, that day. Or I was."

"I was too," she said, frowning and twisting to try and find his eyes. "What's wrong?"

He stared back for a timeless moment, then reached into a pocket.

"I've been thinking again," he admitted, reluctantly. "And I don't... I'm not sure how to do this properly..."

Iris took a step back to see his face more clearly. It was dark--the nearly streetlights were far away, and the moon absent--so she didn't notice the patch of ice beneath her heel.

The world seemed to roll as her foot slipped beneath her, a whirl of light and shadows. Iris braced herself for the cold ground.

There was a clattering sound of something hitting the ground, and Phoenix's arms were around her again, keeping her from falling.

"Thanks," she whispered shakily, as he helped her up.

"I promised not to let you fall, didn't I?" he teased gently, embracing her.

She laughed at the old promise, turning in his arms. Something gleaming caught her eye, reminding her of the clattering sound. "You dropped something."

For the first time, he looked a little shaken. "O-oh, um..."

She'd bent down to pick it up and had almost handed it to him when it dawned on her what it was. She stilled.

"Phoenix... this... is this...?"

He was rubbing the back of his head sheepishly, words pouring out in a torrent as if he were in a debate where winning relied on his ability to run over people's logic with sheer willpower and ability to bluff. "I was planning on doing it properly, with all the kneeling and romantic atmosphere, somewhere warm, but waiting was hard and since you're leaving soon and I won't see you again for months I--"

A sudden, fierce joy seemed to blaze through her, chasing the cold away. Iris hadn't realised how content she had been, rather than happy, until this moment, entwined futures stretching before her in a long path.

She didn't let him get any further. Iris threw her arms around the man she had loved for more than a decade, and cut off his words with a kiss--a proper one, deep and consuming, making it difficult to breathe.

His very agreeable response, which was to stop talking immediately and kiss back, would have made her blush as a young girl, in university. She simply tightened her arms around his neck. They'd done this before, and enjoyed it IMMENSELY.

Alas, the need for oxygen is a shared weakness among humans, so she drew back the few centimetres required to separate their lips.

"Is that a yes?" he gasped.

Feeling reckless, Iris slid the ring onto her fourth finger and leaned close again. She grinned, cupping his face with both hands. "Now, where were we? Should we take this back to the apartment?"

- : -

Behind a parked car, Apollo tried in vain to get Trucy's young eyes to look away.

- : -

**TBC**

_R & R, please_


	5. January 31st 2019: Old Guilt, Fresh Snow

**Walking On Eggshells  
**5. Old Guilt, Fresh Snow  
_January 31st, 2019_

- : -

Iris remembered a time she had been optimistic. She had thought, after returning, that she would have a lifetime to forget the world outside Hazakura's doors; that the familiar, rhythmic fall and melt of ice and snow, imprinted after nearly fifteen years tucked away in the mountains, would wash away the memories of everything she had lost--everyone she had betrayed. When it became clear that thoughts of the sweet boy she had loved, and the strong sister she had adored, would not leave her, Iris had still hoped that time would dull her wounds, like it had hopefully dulled his.

But curled into a corner, the thin sheet of paper clutched between two shaking hands, and trying not to cry, Iris finally admitted defeat. It had been six years; the pain was still an open gash in her heart, and it would probably never leave.

"Iris!" Sister Bikini's voice rang through Hazakura's empty halls, and Iris lifted a quick hand to wipe her eyes with a soft purple sleeve.

She didn't want to see Sister Bikini.

Guilt flooded through her, again, but it was not enough to prevent Iris from leaving her rooms, leaving behind Sister Bikini and her querying eyes. She couldn't face Sister Bikini and her kindness now. Iris stole quietly through Hazakura's hallways until she reached the exit to the back yard. Sister Bikini wouldn't see her there.

Outside, it was even colder. Snow pattered down in a flurry of icy kisses, piling up in the centre of the courtyard. Iris pulled up her hood, making her look like a snow-ghost from far away, to shield her from the frozen rain. The clouds blotted out most of the sun, but the faint orange splashed across the Eagle Mountains told Iris she had been neglecting her duties the entire day; she had been holed up in her room, shoulders curled and face hidden, reading the letter again and again.

Just thinking about the letter made Iris' fingers itch to open it again; to subject herself to some sort of mental torture. She was helpless all the same. Iris retreated to a nook, back pressed against the icy stone walls, and her freezing fingers flicked open the sheets of paper.

There was a letter there--she had not yet read it. The notification clipped to the front had made her world stop spinning, and she'd had no mind to care about anything else.

_"...Subject: Dahlia Hawthorne_

_Age: 25_

_Execution Date: January 25, 2019_

_Method: hanging..."_

Six days ago. Iris had no spiritual powers, but for a moment, six days ago, while she was sweeping away the fresh drifts of snow from an earlier storm, she had thought of a noose tightening around her neck with no escape--she had felt an iron fist clutching her heart with no hope of mercy--

Now she knew why.

Dahlia was dead.

Her sister--twin--other half--was dead.

And Iris was completely alone; with faded memories, old guilt, and ghosts she could feel but not see, to keep her company.

"I'm sorry, Dahlia," she whispered to the empty air, knowing, as she had for the past five years, that it was far too late. "I'm sorry I couldn't get the necklace. I'm sorry I couldn't let him go. I'm sorry you had too--had to..."

Somewhere out there, perhaps, her sister was listening, and sneering. Iris could picture her twin's profile, like an inked out shadow against the Eagle Mountains; the way Iris had seen her last. It had been sunset, faint pink glazing Dahlia's cheeks, her braids and eyes shining, the impatient, desperate demand: "Have you got it back yet?"

Iris hadn't gone to see her sister in prison; she had been a coward, retreating behind Hazakura's gates, hiding from the people she had betrayed, had hurt so badly. Now, she would never see Dahlia again, except as the pillar she had always leaned on, a ghost lurking in her memories.

Inevitably, irrevocably, thinking about Dahlia made Iris think about HIM again. She thought of how she had seen him last. It had been sunset then, too, and Iris had been on the roof of her dorm in Ivy University. She had watched him while he walked past, beneath, his shadow trailing behind him, like something dark waiting to rise and collapse, wave-like, onto his shoulders. His face had been impossible to see; he had not known she was watching him. How similar, that last glance of him had been from Dahlia's; and how different.

She had loved him.

Iris no longer had any difficulty admitting it to herself. It was, perhaps, her one flash of self-awareness, a glimmer of realisation within the chaos of those first days back.

It was easy to admit to herself, now, that she still loved him -- or thought she did, at least. Away from the excitement, the constant movement of the city, Iris still found it difficult to find things to distract her from her thoughts -- and her thoughts meandered to him more than Iris would have liked. Even throwing herself into the Temple chores--sweeping clear the paths after snow-storms, scrubbing the floors--could only make her forget for so long.

'Do you still remember me, Feenie?' she asked silently. Or had he forgotten, to become the man news tabloids labelled him, in fact as well as rumour, like Iris had hoped when she fled the city?

('Excuses, excuses,' a nasty, but terrifyingly perceptive voice whispered in the corners of her mind, ghosting past her locks and barriers, like an arrow that had been shot straight and true. 'Don't justify your betrayal, dear. You have no right, after your fall.')

Of course Iris had kept tabs on Phoenix Wright -- she couldn't help herself. Even though it had become habit to brush away the urge to pick up the phone near Dusky Bridge and dial, and even though the way something in her chest twisted thinking of him had become a familiar friend, Iris had never been able to wholly escape mentions of him. Whenever she visited the town at the base of Eagle Mountains, Iris had set aside hours to read the latest news on the internet -- sometimes against her will.

At first, there had been few mentions of him; Iris had poured again and again over the public records of State vs. Wright, meagre fare as it was for a starving woman. But then, two years ago, that had changed. Whereas, before, Phoenix Wright was like a ghost in the system, a new landmark trial appeared: State vs. Butz. Her Feenie had defeated the Rookie Crusher, and in his first trial too.

Sister Bikini had remarked that Iris seemed unusually happy; she had wondered if Iris had found another suitor, much to Iris' dismay.

Victories lodged under Phoenix's name appeared, one after another, a series of triumphs that caught even Sister Bikini's attention (though solely because of the miracle of Kurain Channelling's redemption and the influx of reporters from the widespread publicity it generated).

Iris, on the periphery of it all, had spent more than one night lying awake and reminding herself that, as much as her fear, as much as her guilt, this was why she'd kept away; and judging from all the activity around Phoenix, and the fulfillment of his decades-old dream ("There's someone I want to save," he'd whispered into the nook between her shoulder and neck, arms gentle as they embraced her), it had been the right choice. She had no reason to still miss him; Hazakura Temple was her world. Her indulgence in a remnant from her days outside its gates should have been nothing more than a last snatch of desperation, hidden away and denied in shame if it were discovered.

'Forget him,' she'd told herself. 'Let him forget you.' And, in her darkest moments, or when she had stood staring at the phone for too long, the stillness of the air heavy and compelling, she would add, 'He's forgotten you.'

So her days, weeks, and months had passed, steady and rhythmic, like putting one step in front of another away from the swaying bridge--and its accompanying dangerous link to the outside world--until two days ago when Iris visited the town. There had been two packages waiting: a complimentary copy of the magazine featuring an article on Hazakura Temple, which she'd passed to Sister Bikini after a cursory scan and a giggle at how they looked; and a letter, one that would change her life again.

Dahlia was dead, the notification said.

Now -- now it was time to read the letter.

Iris flexed her frozen fingers. They were stiff, but she managed to tear away the hated notification to expose the real message -- the clarification on why someone had been either kind enough to tell her about Dahlia's death, or cruel enough to assemble the package so the skeletal notification would be the first thing she saw, lacking detail, bereft of any compassion.

It was surprisingly -- shockingly, even -- brief. She read through it quickly. When she reached the end, she stared blindly at the name at the bottom for more than a few seconds.

Then, Iris glanced back at the top, and read it through again, but not as quickly; weighing up every word, the meanings behind each word. She'd posed as a literature student for six months, after all.

Slowly, Iris folded the letter, again, then again, until it was the size of her palm; her eyes fluttered shut, blocking out the world of white motion in order to think.

The man who called himself Godot almost certainly had plans of his own, beyond the stated intentions in the letter he'd penned; it had not escaped her notice what he meant every time he referred to Dahlia, what he was trying to do by mentioning Phoenix Wright: pandering to her guilt.

That did not in any way invalidate the fact that reservations had been made by a Pearl Fey for three people Iris was surprisingly familiar with, or the knowledge that Maya was, as Godot claimed, the heir to the Kurain Channelling Technique. Reading through the unnecessary mention of names and relationships, brought up to throw her off balance, Iris could see what Godot was asking of her, and why he was so confident she would help.

He was a prosecutor; of course he would realise that Dahlia Hawthorne had been only one half of a set of twins, though Iris did not know how he'd figured out it was she, not Dahlia, who had spent months at Phoenix Wright's side.

Here was her chance to help, he was saying; her chance to atone.

Opening her eyes again, Iris took a good look around her. Her eyes moved from the wall of the Main Hall, against which she leaned, to the frost-rimmed, unlit torches; to the statue of Ami Fey, with its Shichishito held tall and straight. Sheltered under a rusting roof, it already looked so snug there that no one would guess it had been lent out for an exhibition and had only just returned -- a little like herself. Iris watched snow piling up in fresh drifts at the main gates. It would make her chores more difficult, later, when she travelled across Dusky Bridge, and when she swept snow off the paths. In the distance, the Eagle Mountains loomed, tall and majestic, like a guardian stretching across the temple, or a barrier keeping the outside world away.

This was Hazakura Temple, the place she had hidden when her world collapsed around her time after time... and it was no longer her sanctuary -- she couldn't let it be.

In that moment, amidst the snow storm, a flurry of icy punches raining across her face and shoulders, Iris made her choice.

She turned and headed back inside, ducking into the first room with a going fireplace -- Sister Bikini must have lit it, although it was actually Iris' job. Her fist tightened briefly around the letter, but just for a moment; then she flung it, notification and all, into the blaze. Flames licked the blackening sides as the letter unfolded, outlined in eerie orange, and curled in on itself, until only ashes were left.

Outside, the storm was doing the same job, covering all trace of her presence outside for so long; by morning, her footsteps would be gone, and Sister Bikini would have received a perfectly plausible explanation.

All the evidence would be gone, Iris knew; burnt away, or buried -- like old guilt -- under drifts of freshly fallen snow. But she would remember -- how could she forget Dahlia's death? -- and she would help.

Her resolution hardened like cold steel, a feeling she had thought she'd lost six years ago. She would be the first to welcome Godot's ally, and they would save another person's life.

It was time to draw on her sister's strength once more.

- : -

_To Iris of Hazakura Temple,_

_My name is Godot, and I work as a prosecutor for the District Court. You are no doubt wondering why I sent you a notification of Dahlia Hawthorne's punishment. The answer is simple. I know who she was to you, and that you would want to know of her death. I also want to remind you of something you should already have known: Dahlia Hawthorne is dead, but someone like her is incapable of moving on._

_You have spent nearly your entire life, save a few months I suspect, around the concept of Kurain Channelling, and its wider implications, so it should not surprise you to learn that the current heir's life is being threatened. Her name is Maya Fey. She is Phoenix Wright's assistant and best friend, and I am sure your research will have told you of the previous attempt on her life a year and a half ago. One of those responsible is none other than Morgan Fey. Her plans are not over._

_I have acquired information of a plot orchestrated not only by Morgan, but also your sister, and have taken steps to foil it. The plan will take place during Phoenix Wright's visit to the temple. I cannot divulge anything further in this letter, but should you choose to help save a life, my contact details can be received from a mutual ally, who will arrive at the temple on January 2nd. You should know her well, as I am sure you saw her often during your childhood._

_- Godot_

- : -

**TBC**

_R & R, please_

Ah, I just can't help getting back to angst...

Note: Why, you ask, does Iris immediately assume Godot knows of her identity-swap? My reason is that she is paranoid, about her charade at least. Remember the 'blackmail letter' in T&T-5? Her first assumption is that someone found her out, though everyone involved in that affair bar herself (except Godot and Phoenix, one who was already in her debt, and the other who did not know) was dead by then.

Oh, and there's a very brief timeline on my profile for those who find this story a little hard to follow :D


	6. April 8th, 2013: Calm Before the Storm

_For those who are wondering, this is indeed that day Phoenix & Iris were talking about back in chapter 4. Longest chapter so far, and I'm pretty sure it's never going to be so long again. Except maybe... I was planning for it to be about half the length. Too long & rambling? Tell me if you think so. And ah, as for why it took so long to get out, it's about 3x as long as the chapters I was planning when I started, so... it took 3x times as to get out? And, more importantly, exams are coming up, so it might be a little while until my next update.  
_

**

* * *

Walking On Eggshells  
**6. The Calm Before the Storm  
_April 8th, 2013_

- : -

_PHOENIX'S STORY_

Phoenix wasn't unaware of what breathless anticipation felt like; he considered himself too well versed, and had been ever since his first year at school, when accusations of theft rolled over him, and he stood-helpless to defend himself against the tidal wave of childish logic, however flawed-as judgment rained down.

This feeling was similar, but far, far better.

He hadn't bought flowers-not this time-but he wore the jersey she had knitted for him with her own two hands, and proudly so, and stood away from the throng of students at the centre of the dance floor, tapping a foot to the beat. It was late afternoon, and the event had only just begun, but apparently, he wasn't the only one who'd arrived early.

A normal date consisted of time being spent together, from the second he knocked on the door and escorted her to wherever they had decided to visit, to the moment he delivered her back again, maybe stealing a kiss along the way. He felt goofy sometimes for their relationship being called 'cute' and 'innocent' because that made it feel less real to him, as though it was a delicate jumble of play-acting, but true love was true love, he had decided long ago, no matter what label it bore.

Still, he might have been nervous that she was so late, had she not appeared suddenly by his side.

"It's packed," she observed, a hand resting on his arm before he even realised she had arrived.

That wasn't true, though, he thought suddenly. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders to draw her into a hug. Her scent, like ice or snow, but softer, suddenly became stronger, answering his question of how he had known.

"Hello, stranger," he greeted absently as he drew back, even though it hadn't really been that long-just a few hours-since he had last seen her.

"Feenie," she said, "you're not trying to figure out if I'm claustrophobic, are you?"

"I know you're not," he assured her, before remembering that the person he'd seen in town, surrounded by a crush of students rushing back to campus, couldn't have been Dahlia, since his Dollie had been back at the university.

He opened his mouth to tell her about it, then decided that it wasn't a good idea to imply that he couldn't tell her apart from strangers on the street.

She frowned. "Are you sure it's a good idea to go dancing while you're still sick?"

"I'll see the doctor tomorrow," he promised patiently. "I'm already taking Coldkiller X, so I'm sure I'll be fine soon." 'Or I'll have a cute nurse, which would make me just as happy,' he added silently. "Now, no more stalling. We'll be able to push our way in."

Dollie looked a little doubtful at their ability to push into the throng-neither were exactly known for being forceful, unless you counted Phoenix going on an impromptu rant to a rather frightened friend about why it wasn't okay to accuse people of stealing without proof-but agreed after a moment. Hand in hand, they headed onto the large square surface.

It was easier than Phoenix had expected, actually. The music died down as the players switched songs, flicking from one fast number to another, and people had slowed down in the lull between them. The way Dahlia clutched onto his hand, as if hanging on for dear life, indicated she didn't think the same.

Fortunately, people merely laughed good-naturedly and let them pass through, until they were in the thick of things.

"You didn't think our tour was over already, did you?" he grinned, watching the late-afternoon shadows writhe on the floor. "I promised to show you everything you missed out on before you met me, and I wasn't finished yet."

"We've been here plenty of times," she pointed out, drawing closer to let a meandering couple dance past.

"Not like this," he retorted easily. "Just take a look."

So she did.

Before long, the music had started up again. He grabbed her hands and spun her around, making her squeak, then laugh, and before they knew it, they were dancing.

It might have been awkward since Phoenix couldn't really dance, and Dahlia had, by her own profession, never done so either, but the embarrassment was washed quickly away by the swell of music.

Amber glinted everywhere, shining from the sun, accompanied by a much paler glow from the globes strung on strings crisscrossing overhead. Later, Phoenix would only recall that part of their date in flashes of colour, or snapshots of smiles and radiant joy-but he would remember that they had never let go for long, even when they were spinning around, the lights steadily gaining strength as the sky darkened.

Jolts of warm orange washed across Dahlia's silky red hair, giving it copper highlights until each individual strand seemed to dance like fire. Her cheeks were flushed from exhilaration as she copied what other people were doing, to great effect, and shadows carved valleys on the plane of her face, but-in Phoenix's opinion-didn't detract from her beauty. A crowd surrounded them. Phoenix knew that, from the roar of noise and ambient chatter, from the swell and dip of brass instruments, but even when he accidentally bumped into someone's warm back, it was as though she was the only thing in focus, and everything else had become a fuzzy blur.

He did not drink, but his head was spinning from the flashes of colour-the bright clothing of his fellow students-and the warmth of her fingers. Bars of music blended together, until he could barely tell each song apart, too busy watching Dahlia come alive.

They left early. It was only sunset when Phoenix and Dahlia stumbled off the dance floor, still laughing over how she had stumbled into someone, turned around to murmur, "Sorry, sir!" only to discover it had been a very irritated woman whose passionate kiss she had unwittingly interrupted. Iris had been mortified, despite the woman dismissing her with an annoyed, but uninterested, glance, in favour of getting on with business. It had taken Phoenix a great deal of patience to distract her again. Dahlia didn't look like she needed to have a bad time.

The noise level dropped surprisingly fast, and soon music had dropped into a barely audible murmur in the background.

"I could have kept dancing," Phoenix told her, when the chirping of crickets eclipsed the festive music they'd left behind.

"Probably," she agreed. "But then, tomorrow, you'd have a really bad headache."

He groaned.

"I'm just thinking ahead," she smiled.

"Don't remind me about the future. I don't want to think about it."

She stopped and turned to look at him. Locks of red hair had fallen out of her normally neat braids, and Phoenix reached up absently to brush a few strands out of her eyes.

"You don't mean that, Feenie," she said, turning away after a moment to resume their walk. A long shadow trailed her footsteps, a stick-like stalker that with nightmarishly similar proportions that joined her at her heels. "You're always thinking about the future."

"Aren't you?" he pointed out.

She smiled, lips curved and eyes drawn very differently from the sweet caresses of a gaze he'd come to expect. "I suppose so, but not very far ahead. Just a few months."

Phoenix nodded. "We don't have time to think. There's too much studying to do."

"Only if you're studying law alongside your degree," she reminded him. She looked straight ahead as they took a shortcut across one of Ivy University's wide gardens. Trees bowed in, crisscrossing above their heads to form a leafy arch, whispering gently with the slight wind. Even when he closed his eyes, for a brief moment, he could feel the play of light and shadow across his face while they passed beneath it. "Just majoring in literature hard is enough for me, along with everything else that's going on. I don't know how you find the... time."

He glanced at her, surprised. "I'll make the time."

"I would expect nothing less," she assured him. "You really would do anything for those you care about..."

"You don't really think that's a bad thing, do you?" he asked, unexpectedly disturbed by the small smile on her face.

"That depends on what they want, doesn't it?" she replied.

She had stopped again. They were out from under the arch now, and when Phoenix glanced up at the sky, he was startled to see pin-pricks of light against the blaze of colour that was sunset. It was like being in a fairytale-in the precise moment of endless glory before everything went wrong, and sacrifices had to be made to fix them again. When he lowered his gaze again, she had turned around to face him, a hand lying atop the tiny bottle she had gifted him so long ago.

It had been only a few months; Phoenix knew that, objectively. Yet he could not help but divide his life into two sections: Before Meeting Dahlia, and After.

When her hand brushed his chest, he felt it, even beneath his jumper-he had showed a lack of good sense in wearing it to the dance, he'd realised quickly, so taken it off and tied it around his waist until they had left-and he was suddenly aware just how smoothly the cloth of her dress slid across her soft skin.

She lifted the bottle up. Golden light danced on its surface, like the glass had been imbued with inner fire, and the fine chain upon which it hung gleamed with faint promise.

"Please give it back now, Phoenix," she said softly, as her other hand rose to also clasp the necklace.

Puzzled, he covered her small hands with his tanned, darker pair. "This again?"

A sad, weary smile crossed her face. "Does it really surprise you that I would ask?"

"No," he admitted. He smiled, wondering how he could wash her woeful expression away. "I promised I would treasure it forever, Dollie. I'm not about to go back on that."

Phoenix looked down at Dahlia.

Dahlia stared back at him.

She looked away first and started walking, leaving him staring at her back and wondering...

No, he told himself. Dahlia loved him, and he loved her.

This was his Dollie. She couldn't be regretting it... could she?

He was about to call out to her, even though he wasn't sure what he could possibly say, but it was as though the universe was plotting against him.

Her cell phone rang.

She brought it out of zipped-up pocket, glanced down at the caller ID, and accepted the call.

"Yes?" she murmured. A jumble of sound followed,

Dahlia's answer was imbued with surprise. "I beg your pardon?... You can't mean... But... Back pains? Just a bit longer... that's all."

There was a long pause, and she murmured, "Please?" Another pause, and this time, Dahlia was filled with relief. "I'll be there."

As she ended the call, Phoenix eyed her warily. "That didn't sound good."

She shook her head. "It wasn't. My... mother. She's... she's old, and she's alone." Dahlia shrugged helplessly; Phoenix understood. She had explained that her mother did not approve of her exploration of the outside world, and that she was worried about leaving the older woman. "She's been complaining about her back, lately. I need to visit her."

"Did something happen?"

"She probably just needs some rest," she murmured.

And with this quiet exchange over, they strode in silence, through Ivy University's gardens, across the courtyards of the campus where Dahlia's housing was located, and up to her building. He saw her to her door, and kissed her good night; a normal end to a not-quite-normal date.

"I'll see you tomorrow?" he murmured against the shell of her ear.

"I might be home," she whispered in return. "It depends on the train schedule." She pulled back, and smiled shakily. "Don't forget to see the doctor."

He grinned, waving a goodbye as he retraced his footsteps, walking away from the room.

In the years to come, still caught in the web of lies, he would wonder if there had been omens he could have picked up if he'd been paying attention, warning him of the future. He would think about the sadness of her smile-hinting she wasn't as happy as meeting her one and only should have made her-and the sombre inflection of her words, when she dismissed his pet name in order to impress on him how serious she was. If he strained, would he have noticed that something had been amiss? Could he have seen past the mask that his Dollie wore, to the woman beneath?

And later still, years after the truth had come out, sitting next to the closest thing he had to a sister in a celebration and reminiscing: had the joy that night with Iris represented been worth the pain that was to come?

Going obsessively over that memory during his university career would not change the past, except to remind himself to study harder-reinforcing his primary, better reason of saving someone-because he hadn't noticed anything, on that day or on any other. There hadn't been anything extraordinary-not in a bad way, at least.

The night air had been cool by the time he neared his apartment, crisp and clear, despite the way stone housing lining the street seemed to lean in toward him on all sides. Square glass windows reflected bits of shifting light, of which he couldn't find the source-gleaming silver and black, with the rare yellow here and there. There was little noise; most of the art students were still at the dance they had attended. The sun had only just set, after all. A sudden rush of air made him shiver and watch leaves dancing up with the spiralling breeze, but his attention was quickly caught by a streak across the sky, moving far too fast to be a plane.

It was a shooting star, and it seemed to beckon to him. _Make a wish._

He smiled at the darkened sky, although he was sure that no one could see it, as he thought about Dahlia, and the promises he would keep when the time came.

He obliged.

"Bring on the future," he said quietly.

- : -

_IRIS'S STORY_

Some time after the dazzling lights had caught her attention and held them, Iris made a mistake in their dancing. She took a step back, smiling so hard her face almost hurt, but her laughter abated quickly as she felt resistance against her back. There was a surprised "oof!" as the other person stumbled forward. Iris spun around with a quick apology ("Sorry, sir-") for interrupting, but it died on her lips as she caught sight of the couples' faces.

She didn't recognise the woman, but Dahlia had shown her photos of the other person-the man her sister had warned her to avoid.

"I - I'm sorry," she stuttered, still stunned, her eyes fixed on Doug Swallow.

He was watching her, too, although a hand had shot out to steady his partner. She could not read his expression.

Suddenly uneasy, she turned back, the warmth of the late afternoon draining away. After the mirth that came from leaving behind all her worries and dancing until her head spun, the reality of the situation hit her like a slap in the face. It was silly that she could sense Doug's eyes on her, especially since the girl, at least, had gone back to their prior activity of attempting to eat one another-in full view of the dancers, too-but she felt like a burning iron was piercing through the back of her skull.

'I wasn't the one who broke up with you,' she said silently.

"Hey, you okay?"

She looked up into her dancing partner's worried eyes and tried to summon a smile. "Yes. I'm just tired, I guess. You should be too," she said, snatching at the sudden excuse. "You're sick."

He studied her-too intently, as had become more common in the past several weeks-and but agreed.

As they stepped off the dance floor, Iris could still feel Swallow's eyes on her, but she ignored it defiantly. So what if she left early? So what if she avoided him? Swallow had known Dahlia-as well as anyone who wasn't Iris herself could-so was the only one alive who might figure out the charade.

Iris would not permit that.

Phoenix's laughter caught her by surprise.

"Did you see her face?" he wheezed, an arm around his belly.

Iris shuddered.

He glanced at her, and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. He did not draw her closer-even though they were out of the heat generated by the crowd of dancers, it would have been intolerable. "Hey," he said quietly, "don't worry about it. I'm sure she's forgotten by now. She was certainly getting busy."

She smiled; he looked unconvinced by it.

His elbow nudged her waist gently. "And they looked perfectly happy to have an excuse to stay there longer. I don't think they'll want to remember it, except maybe as a funny story to tell later on."

Iris frowned at him, nudging him back. "Did you think it was funny?"

Something made Phoenix decide to give the question serious consideration-at least she thought so until he answered. He took a breath and announced, "The look on your face... I never thought anything could make you look more beautiful, but that shock, mouth hanging open and everything, did the trick."

Her laugh that followed surprised her too, as did the ease that she retorted, "You are a liar, Phoenix Wright."

"Maybe I was wrong about the way you were gaping," he teased, "because it really can't be the other one."

She merely shook her head.

The heat and the noise seemed to drop away together, until it was chilly enough for him to don his jumper, which he had tied around his waist after beginning to dance. "I could have kept dancing."

"Probably," she said, "but then, tomorrow, you'd have a really bad headache."

He groaned.

She smiled, turning to look at him. "I'm just thinking ahead."

The smile died away on her lips as she caught sight of the necklace he wore around his neck. Coupled with the fluffy pink jumper she had knitted for him, back when she had been uncertain of her success in worming her way into his good graces, he looked younger than his years. His eyes caught the light like multifaceted blue-topaz stones. But despite how much Iris liked to look into them, marvelling how open they were, it was the blue-green of that little bottle-a deadly piece of evidence-that caught her sight.

"Don't remind me of the future," he said, almost absently. "I don't want to think about it."

It wasn't true, of course. Iris could remember his words, whispered quietly in a moment of confession after he decided what he felt for her was real: 'There's someone I want to save.'

Nevertheless, it was enough for her to stop, a pang of envy eating at her heart. She did not have the same luxury. Nothing BUT the future consumed her thoughts. Sometimes, though, her mind would wander, in a direction Dahlia wouldn't approve off-a direction that made her capable of betraying the her other half.

When he lifted a hand to brush strands of hair out of her eyes-gentle with the flush of first love-she was reminded of why.

Turning away from the disquieting direction her thoughts had taken, she gathered an answer.

"You don't mean that, Feenie. You're always thinking about the future."

"Don't you?"

A cold chill swept through her. "I suppose so, but not very far ahead. Just a few months."

Just until she could get that necklace back.

Phoenix nodded. "We don't have time to think. There's too much studying to do."

"Only if you're studying law alongside your degree. Just majoring in literature hard is enough for me, along with everything else that's going on. I don't know how you find the..."-motivation. Dahlia did a great deal of commuting, since she was staying away while Iris roamed Ivy University, but sometimes assignments required research at the university, and Iris couldn't concentrate on them-"time."

He looked surprised she even had to ask. "I'll make the time."

'There's someone I want to save.'

His words threaded through her again while she agreed.

"I would expect nothing less. You really would do anything for those you care about..."

Something must have showed on her face, because Phoenix glanced at her dubiously.

"You don't really think that's a bad thing, do you?"

She had to remind herself again that he didn't know what he was asking, but it was enough to make her stop anyway. They stood beyond an arch of tree boughs, and the sun was setting. The foreground was completely different-a spread of grass and plants, showing every shade of green, and paths cutting across it-but the image hit her with such force it nearly knocked her breath away.

Dahlia.

Dahlia, risking exposure to the watching lawyers to visit Hazakura Temple so that they could plan. Iris had rushed back to find Dahlia at the courtyard in the back of the temple. It had been sunset there too, faint light softening Dahlia's edges. She had wondered. in that moment, watching her sister rimmed in fuzzy light, if this softer, calmer version of her twin might have become reality if they'd BOTH joined Hazakura; if Dahlia had taken her offered hand as an eight-year-old. But her twin had turned her back and walked away that day years past, blind to-or unwilling to accept-that they would never be valued by their father again, as Iris had come to see.

And that moment of Dahlia's softness had disappeared in the blink of an eye-as if it had never existed-and all that remained was the woman her sister had become, asking a question for which she had no satisfactory answer.

She cared for Dahlia in a way she couldn't define; it was like trying to come up with the way she cared for her arms, or lungs, or bones. She had never even thought about it-their relationship-until she stood in front of this boy and started to see the GOOD in him, drawing her with the gravity of a second brilliant sun.

But how could she help Dahlia-or rather, save her-even though Dahlia had been her pillar in Kurain, and the splash of colour in the frozen depths of Hazakura Temple? Even though Iris loved her?

She realised suddenly that he was still waiting for an answer.

Did she think it was a bad thing to be willing to do anything for those she loved?

Unable and unwilling to reveal the riot the simple question had stirred, her answer was trite and evasive. "That depends on what they want, doesn't it?"

There was to be no getting it off her mind, she realised. The dance, when she had let the pressing future deal with itself for a few hours, was over. Now reality crashed back on her like a pile of bricks, the gleam of Dahlia's bottle reminding her of vows she could not afford to break. She had only one simple goal, the wild joy of the night aside, and it was time to return to it.

"Please give it back now, Phoenix."

Her hands held the bottle, trying to ignore the way it taunted her at her ineffectualness.

But saying yes would have been too easy, wouldn't it?

"This again?" His hands cupped hers, and the intensity was back in his puzzled gaze.

Her answer was for herself as much as for him-for how could she have let her task go with such abandon? "Does it really surprise you that I would ask?"

"No," he confessed.

She despaired again, then, staring at their joined hands, because, despite his infatuation, he was nowhere near as pliable as Dahlia had thought. He clung to this keepsake, the supposed symbol of their love, as tightly as he did his dream of becoming a lawyer. If he thought keeping it hurt her, she knew he would give it back, but during their time together, he had displayed insight that would have shocked Dahlia-who thought she had had him completely fooled-and no false excuse would be good enough.

But the worst part was hers, not his, because even now the warmth of his hands made her want to tell him everything-and she couldn't.

"I promised I would treasure it forever, Dollie," he said, without a trace of awareness of what his words stirred. "I'm not about to go back on that."

For all the emotion that raged within her, he didn't even know who she was.

How could she have forgotten that?

She drew her hands away and started walking again, thankful for the distraction when her cell phone rang.

"Yes?" she murmured.

"There's a problem."

The voice sent chills down her spine in a way she couldn't have imagined when she was younger.

Iris bit down on her lip so she wouldn't stutter. "I beg your pardon?"

"The lawyers." Dahlia sounded frustrated. "They're getting suspicious. Time's running out."

If she had thought she was nervous earlier, it was nothing compared to the wave that crashed over her now.

"You can't mean..."

"She's coming after me! I know it! Get the necklace. Tonight!"

"But-"

Dahlia cut her off, speaking so dispassionately that it felt unreal. "You need to hurry. That nun is working herself to the bone. And something about her back."

"Back pains?" Iris repeated slowly.

"That's probably it," Dahlia said dismissively.

"Just a bit longer... that's all..." Iris trailed away as she realised her sister was not listening. She needed more time, but Iris's needs were not the priority, and she knew it. Phoenix was not even worth a thought.

There was a long silence on the other end, as Dahlia contemplated Iris's plea. It wasn't impossible, surely. They had no evidence! Not while Phoenix wore that small bottle!

"Please?" she said softly.

On the other end of the line, Dahlia seemed to come to a snap decision. "All right. But we need to talk. Tomorrow. Or tonight." After a moment, Dahlia added, "I think that nun is beginning to suspect something."

"I'll be there," Iris assured her in relief.

She spent the rest of the walk thinking of ways to convince Dahlia to wait longer. She had enough presence of mind to make her excuses to Phoenix, in case she wasn't back the next day, but the thoughts chasing each other in circles wouldn't let her sit down to search the train schedule for the quickest way home.

Height. She needed to be able to look down and see that, despite the risk, she was not failing. She could not climb a mountain here, but the air on the roof of her building was clear and fresh, and the chilly wind a welcome feeling against her skin.

It felt like fuzziness in her mind melting away; the dropping of a veil so she could plot her path that much more clearly.

She opened her eyes, the taste of ice still on her tongue, and was surprised at the stone around her, rather than a ravine that dropped away.

Inexplicably, leaning against the waist-high wall that went around the roof of the stone building, Iris was drawn away from the view of sunset and down toward the figure walking away.

It was Phoenix, she realised with a jolt. Bathed in pink as well as dressed in it, casting a long shadow behind him-like a living, writhing sentience, the physical presence of secrets he did not have. There was something grostique about the way they mirrored each other, the man and his shadow. When Phoenix walked tall, so did the shadow. When he raised a hand to brush the leaves of a sapling, his shadow did the same to the sapling's shadow.

She didn't know why, but she watched until he disappeared around a corner out of sight; and then longer still, staring as colours faded into muted navy, and stars began to twinkle.

Movement across the periphery of her vision made her turn and stare.

A shooting star.

She grasped frantically for a wish before it disappeared out of sight, but the words seemed to escape her.

Her final wish seemed to burst out just before the light streaked out of sight.

"I wish... that I won't have to be the one to choose between them," she whispered.

Later, when Hazakura had become her entire world, Iris would regret this moment of weakness-when she had tried to shove her promises off her back and given up, if only for an instant, her gift to be allowed to decide her destiny. Whether she might not have lost them both was uncertain, but she would think again and again of Dahlia's strength in following through to the end. Until years later, when presented with the ability to make a difference, she would learn to draw on that same strength-for better or for worse-but unlike Dahlia, she would use it to save someone's life.

- : -

_DAHLIA'S STORY_

If she closed her eyes she could still see Dusky Bridge at sunset, with a vast canvas of fire across the sky, and hear the roar of an ancient river far below her feet-the remembered sensation of being swept helplessly away as she clung to her hatred to stay alive. She had climbed out that day on her own, feet unsteady and hacking water, battered, bruised, but gloriously alive.

Caught by strong currents, curled into a ball as she tried to avoid what rocks there were embedded in the icy river's bed, she had sworn to never be caught like that again-helpless in the face of overwhelming forces. Destiny, she had decided, crawling onto steady ground, would be hers to be written; she would let nothing overwhelm her-no man, or woman, and, now, certainly not a simple boy who held the last traces of her guilt.

The ringing stopped as someone accepted the call on the other end of the line.

"Yes?" Her twin's voice was a little fuzzy, but Dahlia had no trouble understanding.

"There's a problem," she said, without preamble, opening her eyes and staring dispassionately into white.

She sensed, as much as heard, the faint hitch in Iris's voice; a smothered indication of shock-subtle enough that Iris herself probably didn't notice-that only made the evidence more damning. "I-I beg your pardon?"

Dahlia noticed though. She saw many things that she didn't want to, and this was one of them.

"The lawyers," she spat out impatiently. "They're getting suspicious." Did she have to spell it out for Iris? "Time's running out!"

Clear hesitations punctured her twin's words this time. She could picture Iris's face: eyebrows drawn tersely, her gaze lowered and turned away-inspecting the ground as though the answer to her problems could be found in the dirt beneath her feet. "You can't mean..."

"She's coming after me! I know it! Get the necklace. Tonight!"

"But-"

Her heel dug into the ground as she fought to keep bitter words ripping out at this attempt at denial. Acidic nervousness burned at her throat, with the trappings of fear already following in its wake. It took closing her eyes again, feeling the sensation of water closing above her head and the faintest hint of triumph, to regain a semblance of normality, and she sounded distant even then. "You need to hurry," she informed Iris, as coolly as she could. "That nun is working herself to the bone. And something about her back."

"Back pains?" Worry for the blindly trusting, whining nun was a faint shadow in Iris's words.

"That's probably it," she said.

But Iris did not share plans, which was probably a good thing, on the off-chance of being overheard. What she did say felt like ice quenching Dahlia's urge to move forward.

"Just a bit longer... that's all..."

Iris trailed away, which was fortunate, but Dahlia was not listening. That sensation of being strung-up, jumping at shadows ever since waking up that morning with the sensation of being poised on knife-edge, did not fade away, but it relaxed.

Cold, frozen-fire anger replaced it-so strong she wondered why red did not tint her vision-and settled, with the deceptive calmness of a deep river. She felt like winds were supposed to billow past icily at the revelation, but the atmosphere was stubbornly unwilling to change.

Her eyes fluttered shut, but Iris's face was all she could see-her mirror image physically, as always, but this time, the disgusting, vacant helplessness had been replaced by the cold blankness that denoted the brewing of schemes, hidden behind veiled eyes. Secrets lurked in Iris, in that image formed in her mind; they were finally twins in truth.

The knowledge that she had always expected this betrayal-ever since Iris let her chains of emotion hold her back during the diamond heist long ago-did not make Dahlia feel it less, or mute the anger building at the realisation.

"Please?" Iris said tentatively.

The Dahlia of just half a minute ago would have let the chamber of hatred erupt, the way volcanoes exploded from the pressure of magma being forced upwards; ice dulled her here, smooth clarity shining over.

It was Iris who had begged for the chance to 'save her' in misguided attempt to make up for the betrayal those years ago; her twin would take a great deal of persuasion for Dahlia to proceed. She would need HOURS to remind Iris of where her duty lay, and Hazakura would give her hours.

"All right." It came out slow and measured, but slowly gathering momentum, so she would not be able to change her mind and stop. "But we need to talk." That always meant Hazakura, where they could escape notice for just enough time, and came with a ready-made excuses for her visits. "Tomorrow. Or tonight. I think that nun is beginning to suspect something."

She could remember Sister Bikini's pondering about why Iris had found the need to leave for such long periods, during her frequent visits to the temple.

"I'll be there."

The relief in Iris was unmistakable.

The call ended.

Dahlia's mind flew as she recalled how hopeful she had been when the plan first commenced-although of course she had never forgotten to always be ready to deal with him in a moment's notice. While Dahlia stayed on the other side of town, only occasionally attending the most important lectures-suspicious but not condemning behaviour to the people no doubt monitoring her-Iris stayed on campus under a different name-but referred to herself as Dahlia Hawthorne to Phoenix. The risk of being discovered, by Phoenix, looking at official documentation, or a law-enforcement worker, by meeting Iris, weighed heavily enough on Dahlia's mind, but she was prepared for that eventuality.

And she knew, from the confirmation in the conversation, that it would be soon.

She remembered their last meeting at Hazakura, when she had first realised that she had no control over the emotion shining across her sister's face, and the suspicions that had raised. As sickly sweet as Iris was, she had wondered... now she knew.

Watching her sister standing beneath the vibrant sunset, hands poised to rip that bottle away from Phoenix... Iris had let it go.

Iris had held that bottle, but she had let it go.

Their relationship, as far as Dahlia was concerned, was over.

That it would take a great deal of effort to persuade Iris away was a non-issue.

For Dahlia Hawthorne was ruthless, and as she slid into the maze of buildings-for she had watched the sickly sweet couple for hours, but could not afford to be seen in turn-she smiled. It was not pleasant.

A light shot by overhead. A shooting star.

She knew exactly what she wanted.

"I want the bottle to be destroyed," she murmured. "So the contents will never be found."

She thought of water closing above her head and knew that she would not wait for fate-hanging on the magic of a piece of rock streaking across the sky-to take its course.

Fortune favoured the bold, Dahlia had learned long ago. She could, and would, take the necessary steps to do what needed to be done. She would not wait for someone else to do her work for her; nor would she let fate dictate the path she took. Her choices were her own. She would finish this.

But what Dahlia failed to realise-what she thought she knew, but did not comprehend-was that just as she made her choices, so did others make theirs.

In his apartment, coughs wracking his body, Phoenix Wright clutched his necklace, thinking about Iris-and the couple they'd interrupted on the dance floor.

Outside the laboratories, Doug Swallow frowned as he saw Dahlia Hawthorne walking away.

In a well-lit office outside the university, a young lawyer sipped dark coffee as she wondered when to start taking cases again.

It would be the bitterest lesson of all-one that, if learned earlier, would have changed many lives-but in the calm before the storm, still secure in her talents and feeling smart and free and gloriously alive, Dahlia Hawthorne clutched the poison she had stolen from Ivy University Pharmacology Department and brought on the future.

- : -

**TBC**

_R & R, please_


	7. February 7th, 2019: The Shadow of Dahlia

_Sorry this chapter took a while, but I kept fiddling with Maya's story to try and get more detail in..._

**

* * *

Walking On Eggshells  
**7. The Shadow of Dahlia  
_February 7th, 2019_

- : -

Spirit Channelling was the hardest job in the world, Maya decided, no matter what anyone said to the contrary. Night had fallen at Hazakura Temple, and what had been chilly in the morning had become downright freezing with sunset. She hadn't even touched water yet! As she followed Sister Bikini across the creaking, fragile Dusky Bridge, Maya couldn't refrain from shivering.

Ahead of her, she could hear Sister Bikini chuckling about the foolhardiness of youth, her form dim and shadowy in the darkness. It was hardly an entrancing monologue, but Maya found it easier than listening to the roar of the Eagle River, passing so relentlessly beneath her feet - with nothing but a few planks of wood keeping her from dropping into chaos.

She looked down for a split-second, just enough time to wonder what dropping, plunging helplessly into the fathomless depths of the river, could do to a person.

There were five boards with holes, she counted. She did not close her eyes, because that was ridiculously dangerous, and she did not have a death wish, but she did let her eyes drift away from the safety hazards. Mr. Edgeworth, she thought as she stepped across the first board; he wouldn't be afraid. Aunt Morgan was the next one - a woman so filled with shadows, but Maya could not forget the terrifying strength threatening to drag her down. Sis - Pearl - Nick.

And she was stepping onto solid earth again, the world no longer swirling with every swing of Dusky Bridge.

Nick would hate it, she mused, taking a glance back and able to laugh into the wind. Phoenix hated heights, and he'd been green in the face - like an overripe avocado - when crossing it.

He had been acting so strange earlier.

"Mystic Maya?" Sister Bikini's voice seemed strangely eerie, like a howl of wind in the deep of night, before Maya banished the fear. She hastened her steps to catch up with the nun, who, despite her supposed back problems, was already half way to the Inner Temple.

A thought occurred to her.

"Sister Bikini," she said, "can I ask you something?"

Her hesitation would have surprised people who knew her - unless they knew her well indeed - but Sister Bikini, despite her obvious reverence for Maya's last name and knowledge of family tradition, did not know Maya.

"Eight hours, at least."

"What?" she blurted out, startled.

Sister Bikini looked disappointed. "You weren't asking how long you would need to stay in there."

About to say 'no', Maya saw the sister's face and hurriedly retracted her answer. "That was my next question," she assured Bikini. "But what I want to know was... about that nun. Iris, was it?"

The older woman chuckled. "Afraid she'll steal your man?"

Again Maya stared. "You mean Nick? O-of course not!" She remembered the look on Phoenix's face earlier and bit back whatever she might have said. "It's just... she doesn't say much, does she?"

Sister Bikini hummed, rubbing her arms to keep it warm from the chilling wind. They had padded down the snow-covered path, past the neat line of Buddha statues and unlit furnace, but the Inner Temple looked cold and very lonely, all by itself in the dead of night.

"She's a quiet girl," Sister Bikini agreed, passing through the Inner Temple's gate and leading her to the Training Hall. "But now that you mention it, she HAS been acting strange lately. It's like a demon spirit has possessed her. It's happened once before."

Maya grinned despite herself. She loved Phoenix to death, but teasing him was too much fun to pass up - especially if it distracted her from the reality of spending hours and hours in the Sacred Cavern, still locked behind the gate in the training hall.

'I need to do this for my training,' she reminded herself. 'The village needs me.'

Her eyes found the tapestry of her mother, like a symbol of her destiny watching over her, and Maya shuddered, not from the permeating cold, but from the thick duty that lay on her shoulders, no matter how much she hid it away.

What she said to Bikini was: "Maybe they've met before. I bet they have a secret past together when she tried to... save him from poison! And - uh - Nick, the dim-witted-slowpoke he can be sometimes, thought it was HER poisoning him, and accused her. Before he had a chance to apologise, she fell into the river, and he had to..." - she caught sight of the Fey tapestry - "call in his powerful and beautiful mentor to save her? But after that," she continued determinedly, "she was framed for murder and spent five years in jail - "

Sister Bikini cut her off them. "Don't be silly, Miss Fey." She sounded as though she was caught between annoyance and amusement, and the annoyance was winning. "I would know if my Iris did anything terrible. Why, I would see it on her face!" She looked around, rubbing at her back, looking stiff from the cold. She shook her head. "Just prepare for the training, Mystic Maya. I'm going to look for her."

With a speed that bellied her apparent aching joints, she left Maya alone - still wide-eyed and stunned at this sudden dismissal.

But Maya hadn't survived nineteen years of shocks without learning how to bounce quickly back. In the quiet of the training hall, still faintly echoing from Sister Bikini's escape, she did not undress - it was the tapestry of her mother that held her attention.

She whispered to it the rest of her story. "But fate was kind to them. They met again in the harsh cold of a distant mountain, isolated from civilisation" - Eagle Mountain certainly felt that way - "with no heating whatsoever. Even the Nickel Samurai could not block them as they swept a path straight for one another." She felt vaguely like a traitor for saying that, so added, "Not that he would, of course. Even when disaster struck and Iris was trapped on the river shore for four days for covering up a death, even when Phoenix was trapped in a snowstorm and lost his way for seven days and nights, even when Phoenix's best friend and guide had to turn back to support her village, they never gave up hope."

It was becoming too difficult to watch the tapestry. Vaguely, Maya wondered just why she was spouting off something that she knew for a fact was untrue - Phoenix, lose his way? It would never happen - and utterly ridiculous to boot, but then Sister Bikini's face swam in her vision, and she continued.

"And with those trials past, they lived happily ever after."

It was that line that rang false, because Maya had ended the story, not in the way she had imagined, but in a way that she knew would infuriate the adults who had watched her condescendingly: Aunt Morgan, or Manfred von Karma, perhaps. That look in Sister Bikini's face had been milder, only a faint shadow of disdain, but it had nearly taken her breath away to see it again.

Maybe that was why she had ended the story so abruptly, and so happily.

At the end of any sad movie, Maya always yearned for a happy ending instead of a mother of twins dying, or a boat crashing into waves, or two lovers separated by death-by-poison. She had seen too much to accept anything else.

But despite her odd half-formed vows, it had been meeting Phoenix that showed her the many paths to that resolution. There was strength in him, even if his way of swinging between dashingly perceptive and excruciatingly blind made her feel dizzy just standing on the sidelines as he used his skills to dazzle the court.

Aunt Morgan and Manfred von Karma, and Matt Engarde didn't understand strength when it came in the sort of package that Phoenix Wright was: good-natured, passive, laid-back, and, despite his intelligence, capable of single-handedly destroying the realm of logic. But Maya knew.

It was the sort of strength her family would need, she realised with the chill of sudden premonition. They would need to find the strength that had sustained them in the dark years when Kurain Channelling had been in limbo, tenacious and understated, hoping that some resolution would finally arrive in the years yet to come.

Something was going to happen soon, Maya knew: she was psychic, after all, even if she was no prodigy.

So she would be like Phoenix. She would find a light in the darkness, even if it was as small as a fictional happy ending for her best friend and a nun she didn't know, and those shadows laughed at her for trying.

There was a sound from behind her: rustling cloth and a sigh.

"I was just talking about you," she said to Iris, with a smile.

- : -

Family was not something Dahlia Hawthorne would ever underestimate again.

The world came into focus with a rush of sensation from fingers and toes - how she had missed possessing them in her hellish afterlife - like she was falling back into her body after a long trip away. It took just a moment for her to gather her location: the dark brown wood walls, a futon in the corner despite the cold, and the chill sweeping through thick walls to sink into fragile bodies.

As she looked around, a smile crossed her face - a hint of nostalgia, perhaps, along with the wicked surge of success that felt as sweet as honey. Dahlia Hawthorne recognised this room: how often had she stayed here when she was visiting Iris? She was at Hazakura, and Morgan Fey - Dahlia would not think of that evil, twisted woman as her mother - had actually begun a plan that had a chance at ending in success.

Odd, to think that the woman who had screamed so desperately at their lack of spiritual powers that she'd had to soothe the weeping Iris afterwards, actually had a competent, realist side.

Dahlia took a moment to pin up her hair, tucking her demon-warding hood over her head. She bent to pick up the staff that had dropped from boneless fingers as the mystic surrendered her body. A faint sneer tugged at her lips, then, and she nudged a picture book aside with her toe. How stupid this younger sister of hers was - Pearl Fey, was it? It had taken nothing but whispered reassurances that Dahlia knew were lies to make Pearl an unwilling puppet.

It appeared, Dahlia mused, that both of her sisters were easily led on - little idiots, out to believe the best in people.

Her feet still remembered the layout of Hazakura after all this time, which wasn't really surprising, considering the frequency of her visits. She ghosted through the main halls, wondering whether she would be lucky enough to come face to face with that little traitor after all, or maybe the boy-turned-man who had spelled her downfall. It made her remember a phone call where Dahlia had swallowed her rage, and realised that Iris really was her twin - and that the brains hadn't been delegated to only one of them.

She considered them as she crossed the bridge, grinning at the steady sway, and at the rush of water beneath her feet - remembering what the water had done to her, and done for her.

Before the trial of Terry Fawles, Dahlia would have been happy to leave those two sickening lovebirds alone, if they ever did meet. If she had still been human - not a disembodied spirit - she might have remembered that she had once loved her sister, though not in the conspicuous speech-making way, but Dahlia rather liked to think that swift-moving currents had polished away that sort of rot. She had been fourteen when the Eagle River scoured away her shock at this sudden betrayal, the feeling that had her biting down on her lower lip until she nearly drew blood, wondering where her twin was. But even then, with that forced apathy, Dahlia could have let her sister have her peace, as long as it did not intrude on Dahlia.

With the second betrayal, one she had picked up so late because she had underestimated Iris, anger had welled up until she could not let Iris have her happy ending - she would consciously grasp that happiness and shatter it.

And that was the crux of their relationship, wasn't it? They'd both relied so much on the fragile bond of family - their family, at least - and taken and taken, until there was nothing left except betrayal and pain.

The spectre hung between Iris and Phoenix, too, and that surprised her. They were both such forgiving people, so blissfully naive, ready to believe the best in others, but they would never be able to trust one another, not for a long time, if ever again. Another stroke, another secret kept, would make any later relations break down, and from the way both seemed to be unwilling to let off steam through an argument, a big problem would destroy them - unable to work it out.

And because Iris was a coward, and Phoenix had moved on, they wouldn't even try.

She had passed through the creepy line of statues and was trailing a hand on the warmth of the incinerator - someone had used it, recently - when she saw the outline of an old woman in the gloom.

It took a moment to summon up a sweet smile, when she saw who exactly it was.

"There you are!" cried Sister Bikini. "Good girl. Just what ARE you holding?"

She was still holding the staff in her hands, Dahlia realised suddenly. "I - ah - I think this belongs in the storage shed. I need to return it. Um, Sister Bikini... where's Maya?"

The head nun shook her head. "That girl... such a wild imagination. Thinking you'd been to jail... really! I left her alone to give her some time to think."

Dahlia tried not to look amused by Sister Bikini's reaction. During the occasions she had visited, Dahlia had noticed that the head nun had this sort of... hunger, like someone with her life unfulfilled. Bikini appeared more comfortable acting as Iris's surrogate mother than her teacher, and had always been sensitive to anyone who was closer to Iris than she was.

Was it any wonder, with an in-loco mother like this, Iris had never known the feeling of standing on her own two feet?

Here Bikini was now: prepared to defend her supposed daughter from a fantasy.

Dahlia thought again of what Sister Bikini had said. "Me, in prison? Iris of Hazakura? That's absurd."

"I told her that," said the head nun indignantly, with as much dignity as her short, chubby frame could hold when her hands were propped on her ample hips. "You don't have any secrets from me, do you, Iris?"

Dahlia plastered the kindest, most sincere smile she could on her face. "Of course not, Sister Bikini. You're like a mother to me, and it has been my honour to grow up with you. I would never!"

Sister Bikini laughed. "Now, let's get her prepared."

They found Maya standing by the portrait of Misty Fey, back to it and staring into the distance. There was a speculative look on her face as she regarded the Sacred Cavern, but it melted quickly into a bright, clueless smile that made Dahlia shiver with anger. She wanted to take her revenge then and there, but she had no weapon.

Then she remembered her staff.

"I just need to go and put this away, Sister Bikini," she told the head nun, who nodded.

And there it was: through a chilling corridor was the storeroom, with the dagger she had stored there many years ago, on one of her visits. The stage was set. All the players were there, the victim, the witness and the 'murderer', and all she needed to do was to back and let flesh part beneath her dagger.

Twisting the staff nimbly, Dahlia Hawthorne prepared to commit murder.

- : -

The feeling of ill-boding was becoming stronger.

Maya tried not to let it bother her as she began laying out the various candles, magatama and tools she would need to begin her ceremony. The ritualised actions were soothing, but her mind couldn't help but wander.

There was something different about the nun. Maya was certain of it. She looked completely identical to the gentle, eerily calm Iris that Maya had eaten dinner with - shovelling food until she was warm and bloated - and sounded and acted the same, but Maya's spiritual instincts told her that something was troubling the nun's soul.

Maybe Iris had spoken to Phoenix and been freaked out by his vagueness, Maya conjured wildly.

Halfway through the ceremony, Sister Bikini excused herself to return to Hazakura Temple, reassuring Maya that Iris knew exactly what she was doing. Maya nodded, still caught up in her arranging.

She had laid out most of the pattern when she stopped, realising she needed to get something. She sat up and stretched, wondering how Phoenix and Pearl could be so unaffected by the cold. How was it that Maya, who was supposed to be the most advanced, still couldn't catch up to her younger cousin, and a man who had psychic powers he could only access when it was channelled through the magatama? Would she never be strong enough?

The feeling of inadequacy was not new, but it shook her more than usual, as she headed toward a spare prep room.

That was when it happened.

Her head was spinning before she actually felt the pain, and the world seemed to tilt beneath her feet.

A dull throb centred at the back of her head, like someone was digging into the base of her brain.

She tried to twist away, hearing a scuffle from behind her, her body sluggish even as her mind screamed: PANIC! PANIC! RUN! RUN!

How could she be so slow?

No, she had to be faster than this!

Her breath tore out of her, as she ran blindly deeper into the garden, feet sinking into snow, away from the threat, but she could hear someone right behind her.

The pain in her head was killing her, and it made her a little slow to comprehend that what she was stumbling against was the stone lantern of the Inner Temple's garden.

A lance of horrified clarity lanced through her mind: she was trapped.

- : -

There was a time for rage, but this was not it.

So what if that stupid nun had hobbled back to the temple, stopping only to tell Dahlia before leaving? Dahlia's sole purpose was revenge against Mia Fey, not Iris. And that revenge was huddled in front of the stone lantern, wide-eyed and helpless. What a clueless girl, Maya was, to be utterly unaware that something was wrong until she was hit on the head.

The dagger Dahlia retrieved from a pocket felt weighty in her hands, and as she approached, she saw Maya's eyes fix on it in terror.

NO, the girl mouthed, her back to the lantern, eyes darting one way or another without discovering a weapon. Then, actually saying it, "No... HELP ME!"

Her arm raised to make the killing stroke, Dahlia froze unwillingly, unable to believe what her body was telling her.

Red-hot pain, the likes of which she had almost missed when she existed, without a body, erupted from her torso.

Maya had a weapon after all, and it was stabbed through her stomach, making the body falter and fail, making Dahlia lose control so they sank together onto the ground: Maya into a dead faint, Dahlia fighting not to do so. She could barely crawl toward the stone lantern, too weak to raise her dagger to end the mystic lying in a dead faint on the ground.

She would have her revenge, because it was all she had left now.

Four letters was all it took, but it might have taken all the time in the world to get out, her arm collapsing and spirit freed except for an echo of the pain through her abdomen.

And then she was alone, except not quite.

Iris.

Was Dahlia supposed to be surprised when, in the moment she died, her spirit had swept all the way to Hazakura, and the young nun sweeping snow, until she could extend a hand - either to touch Iris's cheek, or to slap her?

This time, Dahlia realised with dawning horror, there was no surprise in Iris's eyes.

She thought of Morgan Fey and her cold, ruthless determination.

She thought suddenly of Maya, in that garden, so willing to fight for her life.

She looked into Iris's eyes, the awareness in them.

Dahlia had underestimated her family again.

And she couldn't help being glad, when she was swept away from the pity in those eyes, that she wouldn't have to see that expression in her sister's face again.

- : -

She must have dozed off.

Yes - despite the tension she had been sure would keep her awake - that had to be it.

There was no way she could have seen her sister there, standing across the room, her face twisted in frustration just like it had been as a child, when Dahlia was denied something she wanted. Twenty-five years old, and Dahlia was still eight and searching for powers she didn't have; prison-weary, and Dahlia was still the fourteen-year-old with riches in her grasp and revenge singing through her veins; DEAD, and yet Dahlia was still the twenty-year-old rushing recklessly ahead to get her evidence back.

She hadn't changed, Iris had realised suddenly. She was still that child, hungering for something beyond her reach and unable to comprehend - truly comprehend - why she couldn't have it.

She would be angry with her sister later: anger and love weren't mutually exclusive. She would be furious.

But for a moment, Iris saw the child who'd taken the brunt of their mother's madness and their father's neglect, and she wasn't angry.

Iris felt sorry for Dahlia.

But then the moment was gone.

She remembered what Dahlia had been willing to do to Maya, and to Phoenix.

She remembered that Dahlia had made her own choices to get what she wanted, no matter what the cost, because though life had been cruel, Dahlia had taken that final step herself.

She remembered the difference between saving someone and helping them hurt someone else for the hope of redemption.

Iris had been caught under the shadow of Dahlia for so long, though she hadn't always thought of it as a bad thing, that even death hadn't been able to bring out her inner sun. She had been trapped, from the moment she looked into Phoenix's eyes and felt her heart shuddering in response, or maybe before that, from the moment Dahlia showed up at Hazakura with a wickedly clever but ruthless plan already stewing.

Maybe... maybe, for the first time since she left Ivy University for a meeting that never happened, she could hope for the sort of freedom that had always eluded her.

And despite the guilt that she knew would hit her, despite the pain, Iris let the knowledge that she was becoming MORE than Dahlia could hope to be fill her eyes, as she watched her sister fade away.

After her five years of stasis, she was finally beginning to move on.

'How could he do this by his mere presence?' she wondered.

Twenty minutes later, her cell phone rang.

"There's a problem."

- : -

**TBC**

_R & R, please_

_

* * *

Next time: back with Phoenix and Iris, 2023 _


	8. February 2021: Three Meetings, One Day

_I apologise for the length of the delay in posting this chapter, when it's not as long as the previous. I blame Hobo!Phoenix. Writing how awesome he is in his knowledge, though not in other ways: simple. Writing the problems he has now without compromising pre-Enigmar Phoenix: not so simple. Getting into his head: DAMN HARD. As it is, this chapter originally ended up on a much darker note with Iris, but I didn't want to write her even further from canon than she already was, so if anyone is sick of sugar!Iris and is interested in meeting Ruthless!Iris (close your jaws in shock), I suggest checking out Screenplay-6 for a slightly more extreme version of the Iris I had in this chapter._

_On a related note, I'm going to warn now that the next chapter will also be slow in coming. Real life runs rampant._

**The events, so far**

April 8, 2013: _WOE 6_, a nice college night out with Phoenix, Iris, and their stalker  
April 11, 2013: State vs. Wright (first time)  
January 31, 2019: _WOE 5_, a look into Iris's life after State vs. Wright  
February 6-9, 2019: State vs. Iris  
February 7, 2019: _WOE 7_, the events of Misty Fey's murder  
March 14, 2019: _WOE 3_, Phoenix's first visit to Iris in prison  
April 29, 2019: State vs. Enigmar; Phoenix is disbarred  
**February 14, 2021: **_**WOE 8**_**, TBA**  
November 31, 2023: _WOE 2_, when Trucy met Iris  
April - October, 2026: Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice  
December 31, 2026: _WOE 4_, a night out with Phoenix, Iris, and their TWO stalkers  
June 11, 2027: _WOE 1_

**

* * *

Walking On Eggshells  
**8. Three Meetings, One Day  
_February 14th, 2021_

- : -

It was with some trepidation that Phoenix entered the visiting room and found Iris already waiting for him. He wasn't nervous about visiting Iris, and it sure wasn't the prison that gave him pause, but he dreaded (or anticipated) the moment she laid eyes on him.

She was nervous too, though, for some unfathomable reason. Her hands were clasped together on the rough, grey surface of the table, but her fingers had worked into a knot from fiddling anxiously.

"Iris," he said quietly, when she failed to notice that he had walked in.

Dark eyes abruptly refocused, and the owner of the distant gazed jumped in shock. "Ph-Phoenix!"

"Were you expecting anyone else?" asked Phoenix, taking a seat.

She shook her head, opening her mouth to say something. It snapped shut when she looked at him, staring.

"Do you like my new hat?" Phoenix prompted, as her eyes slid slowly down again from the neon blue beanie, where they'd been fixed in such astonishment.

There was a pregnant pause.

"It's certainly colourful," she said uncertainly, lost for words, much like various guards had been when they caught sight of him (only the guards been busy hiding smiles.)

"I thought so too when Trucy gave it to me," he said agreeably.

Her smile relaxed until it was playful. "You must really love her."

Phoenix breathed out with a loud whoosh of air - a sigh of relief, not exasperation or annoyance. Two years since her secrets had come tumbling out, and Iris still hadn't fully opened up to him. Phoenix blamed some of her reluctance on the unfortunate circumstance of being trapped in prison, and the rest on their rather twisted history. It was not easy braving the possibility of stumbling onto a painful topic in order to carry a flowing conversation.

They did speak, though, often and at length, and it had become easier, as time passed, to open up again... to remember why he had first fallen in love with her, all those years ago.

"I do," admitted Phoenix instead, in answer to her earlier statement; it didn't come at as easily as he'd wanted it to. "I love her, more than I thought I'd ever thought I could."

And more than he had ever thought he could love anyone, or anything, until her warm smile lit up his gloomiest days and banished the shadows he'd become emerged in.

"Then it suits you," Iris said decisively, as though this were an open-and-shut case. "Apart from that..."

They lapsed into familiar grounds. She was probably as aware as Phoenix that their conversation was settling into a well-worn rhythm, a routine unconsciously woven in order to pass the time. Iris began to relax from whatever had left her unprepared for his visit. They discussed unlinked topics that meant everything and nothing: as long as it continued, it laid out an unspoken reassurance that the world was slowly settling back into a facsimile of order, and jagged pieces of the past being cobbled together again.

He wouldn't ask her how she was, trusting her to open up herself. It had taken her longer to keep her concern to herself, because both had acquired a bad habit of preaching (probably due to being surrounded by, and/or visited mainly by, people whose judgment rivalled a hormonal adolescent's) but Iris had come to understand quickly enough, and let him talk.

He would ask her about the rehabilitation classes she was taking. She would give him a picture of how she was doing, and, at his insistence, how she had improved. It had become such an ingrained habit by now that she mentioned it without prompt, and in the days she fell into self-deprecation he would point to those as evidence. She would smile and accept it, or blush if she felt the praise had gone overboard. He would remind her he was merely commenting on what she had, in fact, done, and although he would back off after that, he would know he had made his point.

She would ask for news of the world at large, and thrive on the life that was so abundant outside prison. If he faltered, she would press him on the little things: details like the extent of the rainstorm that had swept by a few days ago, and if certain flowers were now in season. They'd be a springboard for other questions: was it very cold? Had this exhibition or another opened? And yes, she had heard about it from someone or other during classes, but they didn't really know much. The pale thread of fire, keen interest in the comings and goings of others, gave him more of an idea of what she'd meant when she told him Hazakura had made her content, but not happy.

It was as though, with the promise of new life after her chilled stasis in Hazakura, and confinement in prison, she was slowly coming back to life.

If he'd had a particularly bad time, she would coax it out of him. It had always been easy to talk to her, even as an adolescent, secure in the flush of first love. He hadn't been in love with her for a long time, although a part of his heart had always been rooted to his devastating first time in court, but that feeling had not faded. Sometimes, she would talk him through it with her limited experience; others, she would listen, and although it wouldn't solve the problem - it would loom heavily once the visit ended - he would feel better because of it.

Sometimes - quite often, in fact - they spoke about Trucy. Phoenix had always admired Iris's gentle confidence when it came to nurturing, whether it was a young man's heart, before circumstances took it out of her control, or a small girl she'd never had the opportunity to come to know well, and he knew that Iris enjoyed the chance to try and nudge Phoenix past losing his badge.

The conversations were everything, and nothing; trivial in words, but small inflections and miniscule gestures showed him the things that went unsaid.

There were lapses into silence, and into more serious topics. She rarely asked how far along he was into his investigation; he did not ask about the other Feys (in general. Individuals were fine). Those were issues that promised to be resolved one day, but not yet, and they had time.

Sometimes, he would remind her to be careful.

"It's not a prison for serious offenders," he said, "but it always pays to pay attention."

"I'll be fine," she assured him, yet again.

"You never know who you might meet."

"Like Mask de Masque?" suggested Iris, with a smile. "I heard they caught yet another impostor, but this time, it was a woman."

Phoenix watched her, steady and uncompromising, but not glaring, conveying he was serious.

Iris looked down at her hands, then up again. "Don't worry, Phoenix. The inmates aren't violent, which just leaves the visitors." She shrugged. "And just how many visitors do you think I'd have?"

"I just worry about the strange ones," he said.

"You know everyone who visits me," she challenged. "Are they dangerous?"

"Some of them," he admitted.

And Phoenix stared at Iris as the background dimmed and chains crossed his vision.

A finger traced a circle on her desk. "Of those dangerous people... why on earth do you worry about them visiting me?"

- : -

_EARLIER THAT DAY_

There were days when you just felt the world was out to get you. It was irrational, and you knew it, because there was no way that you were important enough in the grand scheme of things to merit being a puppet of the god(s), but some niggling feeling warned you to just watch out.

Iris felt that way, though she supposed it couldn't really be thought of as a bad day. Maybe... a bad few hours? Strange intrusions from the outside world that she wasn't sure what to make of?

She did not have spiritual powers, meaning it couldn't be a premonition, so maybe she was just jittery because Phoenix was going to visit later?

Satisfied with the explanation, Iris fixed her mind on that coming afternoon, rather than that morning, and continued on her way to return a book to the small library. (It had been a terrible story, about the power struggle between two cousins, a war in a clan, and ended with two strangers where the girls had once been closer than sisters.) She was giving the book to the attendant, another convict, when she heard the voice.

Even later, Iris wouldn't have been able to say what, exactly, about that cold, smooth voice had struck her still; or how it echoed her twenty-year-old memories, when the chief of her memories of it had been when it screamed, angry and shattered, frustrated with failure.

It was cold, and mocking; very different and yet somehow the same.

She looked through a small gap in the books into the corridors beyond. In the late afternoon light she saw another woman, dressed in the prison uniforms as she was. When the woman turned around, sure enough...

It was almost anticlimactic.

In Iris's earliest recollections - fragile like a sheaf of old parchment - her birth-mother had been tall, and intense, her frustrated shouting when Dahlia or Iris stumbled as overwhelming as being swept into an inferno.

Morgan Fey was no longer taller than Iris, except maybe for her amazing hairdo, and Iris had learned to tolerate everything else: the shouting and hostility.

Thrill at the shock ran through her, but it felt strange, somehow.

Iris wasn't sure what made her move out from behind the bookshelf that had hidden most of her form, or what made her start walking towards the prisoner, who was being escorted by another older inmate through the corridors. She certainly wasn't sure what made her step in front of Morgan, but it didn't surprise her. What she did know was the exact moment Morgan laid eyes on her.

A shudder seemed to run from her head to her toes, shoulders tensing, muscles stiffening, limbs locking in what could have been a stumble before the older woman controlled herself. In another lifetime, Iris might have been embarrassed to witness this other woman's moment of weakness, but she didn't look away.

Morgan's guide stared uncomprehendingly at the mother-daughter pair, who had eyes for no one but each other.

"Hmph," Morgan finally said, breaking eye contact when it was apparent that Iris wouldn't. "You've changed."

"Do you two know each other?"

Iris had no difficulty acknowledging their relationship. "She's my mother."

A slight whoosh of breath betrayed the inmate's surprise.

"Then maybe you'd like to show Fey around instead?" the inmate said, as if they were in a five-star hotel that was too big for an arrival to explore.

Morgan's mouth twisted, and Iris, knowing she was about to refuse, spared Morgan the humiliation of being mocked by speaking before she could.

"I will," Iris said, with the gravity of being 'trusted for good behaviour' ringing in her voice.

Morgan had no choice but to follow.

Now that she was actually alone with her mother, the awkwardness hit, and it hit hard.

"I didn't expect to see you here," she finally settled on murmuring.

She could almost feel Morgan rolling her eyes. "What did you think your testimony would do?"

"That wasn't me," said Iris, as they walked. "You of all people should know that, Mother."

There was a pause, like pieces of thought shuffling and resettling again, a stream of thought sharp with hidden rocks. "...She never called me that."

It was difficult to keep from stumbling, like Morgan had, at the unexpected reminder of the past.

Another one.

But this time she could speak and know she was understood. She said something that had been on the tip of her tongue since that morning; something that couldn't be expressed to a stranger.

"You weren't her mother any longer. I wasn't even her sister."

Those words sounded so odd, now that she was articulating them.

"And you don't blame me?" There was something strange in Morgan's voice, as though she was restraining bitterness by hiding it beneath a coy, knowing smile. "Everyone else seems to."

Iris closed her eyes for a moment, thinking of Dahlia's face when the latter locked her in the Sacred Cavern. She thought of watching Dahlia's spirit, still holed up in her bedroom at Hazakura, as it faded away. She thought of the videos of her cousin while possessed by her twin; cold, malicious, and full of glee at the tragedy she believed she'd set into motion.

It was not the smile of someone who had watched the world collapse around her with triumph; Iris knew that smile too well to mistake anything for it.

"She wasn't a victim. Not this time," said Iris, unexpectedly weary, and trying not to reveal that it was still hard to think that way despite having admitted it to herself long ago. Change was a difficult thing to follow; it was far more common to be swept away.

There was another short pause. Iris stared straight ahead and thought of truth and trust.

"How long will you be here?" Morgan asked, finally. Her footsteps had stopped.

Given the excuse to turn around, Iris did so, eyes flicking to Morgan's face.

She looked, suddenly, very much like Dahlia had; a hundred different plans simmering constantly, never giving up, even when she had been crushed. It was very apparent that they were related.

"Two more years," Iris said. "Less than you."

A sudden smile crossed Morgan's face, vaguely familiar in its tilt: Iris had seen it a hundred times on this woman's face. "And you will return to Hazakura, I suppose? To your nun and the loneliness of the mountains?"

_What?_

Iris stared at her, twisting for the memory of her friends and family inside in face of this unexpected attack.

"There will be no one waiting for you," Morgan continued evenly. "There will be nothing left, the way things are now."

There was knowledge in Morgan's eyes. Once, when Iris had been a child, Morgan had taken Dahlia for more intense coaching to try and draw out her spiritual power that simply wasn't there. Upon their return, Iris had fallen into Dahlia's arms, unused to being alone up until that moment. Iris knew then that Morgan had seen it all...

"Think about that," said Morgan, smiling with a thin veneer of warmth.

...but Morgan hadn't seen what had happened in the years since.

Iris turned and started walking again. "Let's k-keep going."

Morgan seized on the stutter at once, at this perceived weakness of character of her second daughter. Her next words were low, and carrying. "Nothing will have changed. You'll still be a daughter of the Branch House, unless you do something about it yourself."

It shocked her.

(_'She's a cold, twisted woman,' _the channelled Dahlia had said._ 'She thought she could finally regain her lost honour.'_)

Watching the spectre of her past scheming yet again, Iris acknowledged that Morgan Fey had always been able to see what others wanted most.

Almost always, Iris thought.

Because this time it was different.

Iris hadn't really believed what Phoenix said about her changes until that moment. He was supportive, and a wonderful friend, even as distant as he had become, but they had done nothing but exchange words. Theory couldn't make up for experience.

Facing Morgan Fey, her mother, was what really drove it home.

She wasn't clutching onto her sister.

She wasn't clutching onto her past.

She wasn't backing down because her mother had ordered it.

_'I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid, not even of Dahlia's memory.'_

Maya knew. Pearl knew. Phoenix knew. Now Iris did too.

How strange, that it had been a meeting with an utter stranger that cumulated into the realisation of change. How strange, that her understand crested now, in face of a woman who might as well be a stranger, too.

It took all her will to keep from biting back her words, as was habit, and say it out loud. "That won't work. You of all people should know that I'm not Dahlia, and I am not you. I have people waiting for me."

If Iris had expected this epiphany to blow her mother away too, she was disappointed.

Her mother stared at her in what should have been Iris's moment of triumph...

...and just LAUGHED, and Iris understood the strange look Phoenix and Maya had when they visited and spoke about the sanity of Morgan Fey.

"I thought so, too," Morgan told her. "But you of all people should know," she parroted mockingly, "that everyone has their secrets, and everything changes when they come out."

'_You'd look even more beautiful with red hair,_' he had said just that morning.

She needed all her strength to turn away, as if the words hadn't shaken her at all, and leave to see Phoenix.

Trust, you see, is like a chain: only as strong as its weakest link. If there are any doubts, any doubts at all... not at all hard to break.

- : -

"I-Iris!" Phoenix stared.

Her head jerked up, gaze questioning, but Phoenix didn't tell her why.

For a brief moment, he wondered why he was surprised.

Then he remembered that they had become friends again, and he expected to be able to trust his friends, at least.

"DID someone visit you?"

Her eyes held his, trying to see through her soul, but he had no evidence to try and break those locks.

Finally, she sighed, and the darkness disappeared, the chains flickered out. "Not exactly. I... I saw my mother earlier today. She transferred here."

The admittance had cost her something that Phoenix couldn't quite pin down.

"You didn't know?" Phoenix asked, frowning.

She shook her head. "Pearl didn't tell me, if she knew, either." A slight frown crossed her face, and she abruptly turned the question session back on him. "Phoenix... who are you worried about?"

"What do you - ?"

"I can see it," she said simply. "You've changed, Feenie, but not so much that I can't tell. Is it Trucy? Is it the bills? Or... is it your case?"

He let it go. "A little of each, I suppose."

She hesitated momentarily, sucking briefly on her lower lip, her hand starting to trace circles again on the grain of the desk. He wished he could reach across the glass barrier that separated them and take her hand. "Can you... tell me about your investigation?"

Phoenix opened his mouth, but couldn't answer, like his words had jumbled up behind his throat, the short pause giving him time to reconsider what his answer might have been.

He didn't want to answer, for reasons similar to, but not quite the same as, why he never told Maya about what he was doing. The knowledge that he was holding back slid slowly into Iris's eyes, like whorls of opaque smoke rising above a fire on a frigid night, but she did not look away or retract the question. She was waiting; his friend, the only one he couldn't quite bring himself to loosen ties with, because she didn't really have anyone else, was waiting for him.

In a moment of clarity, one thing ran through Phoenix's mind: _'How can you expect her to trust you if you don't do the same?'_

It was very hard to meet her eyes.

"I didn't commission the forged evidence," he said, and stopped.

She didn't repeat that she believed him - she had already told him countless times without words - but she waited, expectant, and it was difficult to lie to her even by omission.

It always had been.

"I presented it," he said, and she opened her mouth, then closed it, and remained perfectly still. "I suspect many people, but I don't have the evidence to find the answers."

She tilted her head, listening.

"I have suspects, but I don't KNOW enough about them." Sometimes, Phoenix wondered if the answers hadn't been lost to the past. "Two suspects. I can't tell which one is lying... or if either of them are."

"The answers are out there," she said unexpectedly. "You can't hide the truth."

It said something about Phoenix that he couldn't be as sure of that any longer.

Time changed everything, and even the brightest of suns could be dimmed, if only temporarily.

"True. You just need to make sure that no one who cares finds out," Phoenix said.

Iris closed her eyes. Phoenix thought he could see chains again, but when he blinked, the shadow of doubt disappeared. "Who?"

"A painter. A magician. A lawyer," Phoenix said. "Misham. Gramarye. Gavin."

Iris looked down. "A lawyer... would they do such terrible things?"

Iris had missed a lot while she was in prison.

She tilted her head again, watching, her eyes penetrating and reminding him of... Phoenix shook the name away. She wasn't her sister, even if that gaze made him wonder just how much she really had missed.

"You will find him."

She spoke with such conviction, like the event had been preordained, like it could be taken for granted and then dismissed, that he blinked.

She continued: "I might not be able to help you find clues, so I can only say this. Never forget that the truth is the truth, inside or outside of the courtroom. Your badge may be gone, but Phoenix Wright isn't, and... this is something you couldn't lose if you tried. I don't think you've forgotten, but... I'll remind you again. The truth is bigger than one person... one case... and no one can hide it. The answers are out there, and you will find it."

"One day," he said.

"Maya told me... that your greatest weapon is your belief. It drives you in a way that just fighting for an ideal can't. And I've seen it myself, in you. Whenever you believed in something strongly... you have always succeeded."

She stopped, watching him. Looking at the expression on her face, Phoenix knew they were both thinking about the same things.

_'There's someone I want to save.'_

_'I will keep you safe.'_

_'I won't let you fall.'_

She shook her head. "Perhaps I got sidetracked, but what I want to say is... I believe in you. I have always believed in you. I can accept any secrets that you might have" - Phoenix blinked again at the unexpected direction - "and I... I know that you can handle mine." She took a deep breath. "Phoenix... Morgan wasn't the only one I met this morning."

- : -

_EARLIER THAT DAY_

"Kristoph Gavin," the man introduced himself, his smile as cool and poised and unfathomable as Dahlia's had been.

Iris looked across the table at the man Phoenix had mentioned once or twice; at the man that she couldn't read at all; at the man who had asked to see her, had mentioned that she would look even more beautiful with red hair, had brought up so much of the past before reminding her, unwittingly, that Dahlia wasn't the only family she had.

At the man who would make Phoenix worry about so much if he learned of the visit.

- : -

"He didn't say much," Iris admitted. "Just... asked me some questions... about you. That's why I wasn't sure..."

"You were wrong, you know."

She looked up suddenly. "I shouldn't... have told you?"

He laughed. "Maybe. But I'm glad you did. You've given me a clue after all."

Her eyes fluttered shut, and despite himself, Phoenix was entranced by the movement of her lashes, the curve of her mouth as it formed a small smile. Iris had always seemed fragile... but she wasn't. Somewhere beneath the swathes of silk lay steel, hidden, but certainly not absent. She was shy, and sometimes timid, but she was learning to find the courage to trust again, and Phoenix knew first-hand how difficult that could be, when you were trapped, and heartbroken.

_'I believe in you. I have always believed in you.'_

He watched Iris smile, more confident than she had been at the start of the meeting, gathering herself, not hiding her pain, but truly starting to let it go. Phoenix couldn't help but remember how her beauty wasn't the first thing that struck him, but made his stomach turn all the same; how he looked out for the newest flowers though he couldn't spare the money to buy any, and stored little anecdotes to tell her, or remembered that steady growing volume of her laugh, and tried to cheer her up even when she wasn't feeling sad.

Whatever he felt for her, Phoenix told himself, friend or something more, she was worth the wait.

It sounded like another promise, and as Iris had said, Phoenix always kept his promises.

She had opened her eyes again, and he thought he could see, within her, something very similar. She was waiting too... turning her face forwards and waiting for... something. But for the moment, there was something else.

"If I tell you about Dahlia," she ventured, "will you tell me about... my family?"

It took him all of half a second to say, "Yes."

- : -

**TBC**

_R & R, please_


	9. July 5th, 2023: Hand of Friendship

**The events, so far  
**April 8, 2013: _WOE 6_, a nice college night out with Phoenix, Iris, and their stalker  
April 11, 2013: State vs. Wright (first time)  
January 31, 2019: _WOE 5_, a look into Iris's life after State vs. Wright  
February 6-9, 2019: State vs. Iris  
February 7, 2019: _WOE 7_, the events of Misty Fey's murder  
March 14, 2019: _WOE 3_, Phoenix's first visit to Iris in prison  
April 29, 2019: State vs. Enigmar; Phoenix is disbarred  
February 14, 2021: _WOE 8_, a not-so-normal day for Iris in prison  
**July 5, 2023: **_**WOE 9, **_**TBA  
**November 31, 2023: _WOE 2_, when Trucy met Iris  
April - October, 2026: Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice  
December 31, 2026: _WOE 4_, a night out with Phoenix, Iris, and their TWO stalkers  
June 11, 2027: _WOE 1_

**

* * *

Walking On Eggshells  
**9. Hand of Friendship  
_July 5th, 2023_

- : -

_No matter how far a person flees, the past is always like their shadow: following effortlessly on the heels of the runner. The slow, steady walker, or the reckless sprinter... the outcome is the same. Turn your head when you've travelled one thousand miles, the people who once populated your world months and years behind, and the shadow will still be there, so if you reach out a hand, it will reach out in response._

_Consider, for a moment, the sort of person who would be a reckless sprinter, and the sort who would be a steady walker. Both bear the traces of those who shaped their lives in their gait, in the tilt of their head in preparation for the next leg of the journey, in the pattern of breathing. No one lives in vacuum._

_Remember, for a moment longer, that just as they were shaped by chance or design... so, too, did many lives ripple when their paths crossed with other people's. The runner might have left, but that does not mean those lives the runner has touched will be content staying away. A thousand miles and many years are small obstacles in the quest to reconcile._

_This particular chase ends in a narrow corridor, in front of the third door from the old stairwell, two years removed from the previous face-to-face meeting between the adults, as one very irritated attorney wonders whether or not his bumbling subordinate has actually risen to the occasion..._

The man knocked sharply on the door, evidently not for the first time.

"Wright?"

His answer was a length of uninterrupted silence.

The man exhaled in frustration, no doubt being expressive only because the hallway had been deserted when he entered. He was tall, grey-haired but not old, and elegant if you liked old-fashioned clothes, dusty suits and flamboyant ruffles. Everything about him was calm, collected, bar the momentary irritation when no one showed up at the door; he looked entirely out of place in the shabby apartment block corridor... almost comical.

Phoenix was tempted to let his friend wait a little longer merely because of the amusement factor, but time was a precious commodity. In the end, his daughter took the decision out of his hands. She ducked out from behind him, pushed her share of groceries into his surprised arms, and strode confidently down the corridor until she had reached the door before which Miles Edgeworth hesitated, stopping and staying there until Edgeworth turned to look at her.

"You lost, Mister?"

As if in slow motion, Phoenix saw his childhood friend stare at the red of her magician costume, trail up the corridor, and ghost past him uncomprehendingly. He could almost sense the wild question in Edgeworth's mind: why did all the strange ones come to him?

Sense won over the impulse to bellow the question out. With obvious effort, Edgeworth restrained the look on his face, forcing it into expressionless visage, and then, gliding smoothly to the end of his montage of emotion, managed a mild stare. "Do you know if the owner is home?"

Trucy blinked, staring at Edgeworth as if he had uttered something quite stupid, which, from her point of view, he might as well have. "She's speaking."

The calm exterior collapsed like a swaying pile of bricks, as Edgeworth stared openly. "W-what..."

There was an ominous silence.

Then, "Gumshoe's getting another pay cut."

Wincing in lieu of the absent Dick Gumshoe, Phoenix decided that costing a fellow struggling citizen his source of income was unacceptable, even when compared to the admittedly amusing appearance of Miles Edgeworth losing his cool. Manoeuvring his armful of groceries out of the way to leave one arm free, he waved down the corridor.

His movement caught Edgeworth's attention, pulling his gaze to him, but the prosecutor's eyes were bare of recognition. Odd. Iris had told him that he hadn't changed THAT much. Perhaps it was simply because an entire two years had passed since he'd last seen Edgeworth, whereas only a month or two slid by, at most, without meeting Iris?

Either way, comprehension dawned when Phoenix finally spoke.

"If you called ahead," he said to his friend, "we would have waited to begin dinner. Come in."

Of course, whether Miles Edgeworth would be willing to ingest the chilly junk that was sold where Phoenix worked was another matter entirely.

He passed the unmoving Edgeworth in the time it took the attorney to collect himself, slipping his key in to unlock the door. With a quiet click and a push, the door swung inward to admit Phoenix into his apartment. It was miles shabbier than the offices Phoenix had once used, but he had, over time, learned to school any flash of embarrassment whenever faces from his past visited - rarely.

Phoenix flicked on the buzzing fluorescent light, smiling secretly when Edgeworth remained at the door, uncertainty rife on his face. Crossing the room and setting his groceries on the scrubbed counter, he gave Trucy a pointed look that had her scampering to stuff their goods into the various cupboards and the small fridge they belonged in. Relieved of pressing tasks, Phoenix was free to watch Miles Edgeworth's first steps into his apartment, and observe his childhood friend's reaction to all that had changed.

He caught the attorney's eyes flicking up at the ceiling, with its fading light and cracked paint; skimming to corners cluttered with furniture obtained at garage sales - a shaded lamp, a threadbare couch, and a beat-up television set - or so worn out it made no difference; drifting over white-washed walls; passing through the kitchen unit, a small divider separating it from the main room, with a small dining table and bare chairs pressed up against the divider; and finally back onto Phoenix.

Edgeworth was too much of a lawyer to let surprise show on his face, but Phoenix could see how he looked unsettled.

"Don't look so surprised," said Phoenix. "You'll upset my daughter."

Edgeworth's eyes tracked slowly to the young girl, who was humming as she deposited a bag of apples into a scratched glass bowl on the middle of the dining table. "Trucy?"

Trucy waved at him.

Edgeworth's eyes closed, slowly, and opened at the same time - as though he was trying to control himself. When he spoke, his tone was carefully neutral. "Your emails somehow failed to convey your circumstances."

"Sorry," Phoenix said, not quite cheerful but not quite bland. "It slipped my mind."

Eyes narrowing, Edgeworth glared at him, and Phoenix knew instantly he was trying to pierce through what he thought was Phoenix's outer shell.

To be fair, Edgeworth was justified in his accusation: Phoenix hadn't told him much over the phone.

Phoenix still wasn't sure why, but judging by the resignation creeping slowly onto Edgeworth's face, it had been the right decision.

Casting his eyes around for a suitable distraction, his gaze fell on Trucy, who had finished stowing their groceries - for tomorrow - and now stood before a closed window, studying the night sky with too must interest to be entirely genuine. He, in turn, observing her hidden curiosity, called out to her.

"Trucy," he said, suppressing a smile when his daughter spun around instantly, and fairly flew to his side, "meet Miles Edgeworth. He's a childhood friend of mine."

The barriers to Trucy's curiosity fell at once. She didn't bother hiding the way she looked Edgeworth up and down with those excellent eyes, face shining with sudden glee that Phoenix wasn't sure what to make of. She reminded him very much of another young woman he had once known just as well, suddenly, although Trucy and Maya had never met. She certainly showed no awkwardness crossing the room to stand, once more, before Miles Edgeworth, and thrusting out her hand.

"Nice to meet you," chirped Trucy, oblivious to or ignoring the slight, surprised pause before Edgeworth took her hand and shook it. "Trucy Wright, magician-in-training."

Edgeworth nodded. "Miles Edgeworth." He hesitated momentarily, eyes resting on Phoenix, before he continued, "Prosecutor."

The small hand withdrew. Phoenix saw a slight wince on Edgeworth's part - perhaps expecting a condemnation for his chosen career at the hands of someone who had suffered from the failure of the system - and he had no doubt Trucy saw it too, but she ignored Edgeworth's discomfort. The hand merely moved the short distance to her chin as a gloved finger tapped her chin in quiet thought.

"You were in law, too?" she asked. "I thought you looked serious enough to be a lawyer, just like Daddy used to, but then I saw the ruffles... I thought the agency might finally have a new employee," she added mournfully, drooping with disappointment. "Are you sure you don't want to quit and join us?"

Edgeworth's eyes flicked around the apartment, its shabbiness practically screaming out exactly how much they earned, and he seemed to rear back, like he'd been struck a blow in court, although physically, he did not move at all. Phoenix could almost see the gears in Edgeworth's head grinding as he tried to frame the intent behind the unexpected question with what Phoenix had told him, and select an appropriate response. He had Phoenix's sympathy; Trucy was a little like Pearl in the way everyone found it difficult to look into her disappointed face and not do everything possible to make the look go away, even though Trucy and Pearl had never met, either.

Edgeworth finally rested on, "I'm afraid I don't have the necessary qualifications."

Completely devoid of any hesitation in asking what was, effectively, a perfect stranger to join their small company, Trucy simply shrugged. "If Daddy can do it, you can too."

Phoenix wondered if he ought to be offended by the incredulous look Edgeworth passed onto him.

"I play," Phoenix volunteered.

"An instrument?" Edgeworth asked.

"The piano," clarified Phoenix, nodding to the small practise keyboard tucked beneath the dinner table, "among other things. I -"

He broke off as Trucy wheeled around, her glare burning into his skull. "Don't be so rude," she admonished, returning to his side. "Aren't you going to offer him refreshments? Or something?"

Phoenix's mind immediately trailed to the desolate fridge, with its unapologetically cheap contents, and the cupboards, which were conspicuously sparse of luxurious snacks. Oh, their contents was enough to feed them, sure, but there wasn't anything wasteful. None of this showed on his face.

"Would you like grape juice?" he offered noncommittally, stating the only drink the apartment had in abundance and reminding himself exactly which bottles held grape juice.

"Thank you," Edgeworth said, which Phoenix took as a yes.

Trucy had poured out the juice and flitted across the room to pass it to Edgeworth before Phoenix had a chance to even reach the kitchen. He settled for pulling up a chair and dropping in, listening to the quiet sound of running liquid as Trucy filled another cup, surprisingly without flair for the dramatic. Edgeworth, he saw, was frowning suspiciously at the beverage - Phoenix could almost hear him think, 'What exactly is this? Dare I try what Wright drinks? Will it give me brain damage?'

Fortunately for their friendship, Edgeworth made no comment out loud.

Phoenix, for his part, swiped the bottle once Trucy had passed, her own glass of grape juice in hand. It caught the light in a way that was oddly mesmerising, like a ruby - the only gem colour Phoenix had in his world now.

Catching sight of Trucy's bright red magician's outfit (and pointedly ignoring his neon blue hat), Phoenix thought wryly that Diego Armando would be proud.

"So what brings you here?" Phoenix finally asked, looking up from the swirl of red in order to pin Edgeworth down with his gaze.

It didn't work. It never had. Edgeworth merely said, "Curiosity."

He was lying, of course, and it was a rather big lie, considering what Phoenix saw - more red, in the form of chains.

"Curiosity's never moved you this far, before," noted Phoenix.

A sigh escaped Edgeworth, and he shrugged. "Two years ago. We met at the courthouse, AND I had just flown in from Borginia."

Phoenix shook his head. "That was for a case with Interpol," he said, adding, "Besides, I don't enter court often anymore. You couldn't have expected to see me there."

"Mr. Edgeworth," Trucy interrupted, growing impatient with a discussion she could not understand, "I thought you worked in this district."

Edgeworth regarded her levelly, his gaze distinctly considering. "I've been working with Interpol for the past few months, but yes, I live here. I just haven't had much of a chance to visit."

"For the past two years?" Trucy pressed.

Again, Edgeworth shrugged, languid and a little superior. Just looking at it brought back memories. "There were... issues I had to take care of."

"How many cases is this with Interpol, now?" Phoenix said, before Trucy could drag Edgeworth's life story out of him - a feat which would not be appreciated. "Five? Six?"

"Just the third, officially," Edgeworth answered. "It's Franziska who has been working with them."

Trucy was quiet, eyes moving back and forth, like she could discern more about Phoenix, and the people who had populated his past, just by staring. This time, Phoenix let her.

"Just how is Prosecutor von Karma?"

By Edgeworth's slight wince, the name had not been appreciated. No doubt it brought back unpleasant memories of his own.

"Busy," was the succinct reply. "She can finally make her perfect case without worrying about a person's innocence." There was a slight pause, before Edgeworth added, "Much."

Phoenix's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "She's never worried about that before."

He caught the pause on Edgeworth's part, the slight hesitation that coincided with a strange expression crossing his face, before the prosecutor responded. "She's nearly twenty-four now. A great deal can change between nineteen and twenty-four."

Phoenix had been innocent at nineteen, conditioned to believe immediately in his friends and pretty girls; he had prosecuted his mentor and friend's murderer at twenty-four.

Edgeworth had been perfectly willing to follow Manfred von Karma's teachings at nineteen; he'd had his belief system shattered and built together again several times at twenty-four.

"I know," said Phoenix, and he wondered what earth-shattering realisation had been forced onto Franziska von Karma. She had been so young.

So had Maya.

"As far as I know," Edgeworth told Phoenix, "she's on another smuggling case, in Borginia."

"'As far as you know'?" Phoenix repeated.

"Wright," Edgeworth said, "you do know I'm not at liberty to discuss details, correct?" There was a second hesitation, and Edgeworth added, "I haven't seen her for the past year."

Phoenix looked up from his glass to frown at Edgeworth, running a finger along its smoothness to listen to its soft humming, and wondering what had created the unspoken schism that was so obvious between the almost-siblings. Yes, Edgeworth was right. A great deal had changed in the last four years.

And so the two chatted, about Edgeworth's work - or what he was at liberty to discuss, anyway - and what had changed in the past years. Many people Edgeworth spoke of were strangers to Phoenix, reminding him of how he'd fallen out of contact with so much of his past. When had he last phoned Larry? Dropped in with Detective Gumshoe and Maggey Gumshoe? Or spoken at all, really, with people other than Trucy, Iris, and Kristoph?

Throughout the discussion, Phoenix kept an eye on the time, and on Trucy as her curiosity slipped slowly into fatigue. Once her head began slipping - she was a twelve-year-old girl who'd been working in a bar - Phoenix told her to go to bed. Reluctantly, she did.

It was then that the discussion took a turn for the serious.

"How long are you going to keep this up?" Edgeworth said abruptly, once Trucy had disappeared into her bedroom.

Phoenix frowned at his glass. "Keep what up?"

"I spoke to Maya," Edgeworth told him for an answer, which it really was.

Phoenix said nothing.

Edgeworth went on, "When was the last time you spoke with her, Wright?" He waited for Phoenix to answer, and asked, when none came, "Can you even remember?"

"Two months," Phoenix said. "It's not that long. Is that why you came?"

Edgeworth was quiet.

"I thought you were too busy for this," Phoenix added.

Slowly, Edgeworth shook his head. He didn't address Phoenix's comment, but asked a question of his own. "What are you trying to achieve by this?"

His gaze lowered, to make sure Edgeworth couldn't use his prosecuting talent to read him, he answered, "It's nothing."

When he looked up again, Edgeworth was frowning at him, and this time the prosecutor wouldn't let it go.

"You're a terrible liar, Wright," Edgeworth said with the fire that eclipsed all else in courtroom banter, "especially with me. You've stopped emailing me, and talking with Larry. Now I find out about Maya."

This amused Phoenix enough that he could feel a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Are you actually offering to help?"

Phoenix expected a simple yes or no. What he didn't expect was something akin to a confession of guilt.

Edgeworth sighed, his eyes relaxing out of a glare and drifting away from Phoenix, but though he looked, he seemed to take none of the furniture in. "Maybe you don't realise it, but seeing you like this doesn't exactly make me happy. You helped me Wright, all those years ago. It would be remiss of me not to return the favour, and four years ago, when you needed it most, I couldn't."

There was an unspoken undertone: 'You wouldn't let me help.'

"You're a friend," Edgeworth confessed, and he sounded more comfortable saying this than Phoenix would have expected. "So yes. I am offering."

And it was this, more than anything, that reminded Phoenix of just how much time had passed. He'd heard how Franziska was different, but what about Edgeworth? What had he used the impersonal factor of emails to hide, as Phoenix had? What events had changed Edgeworth enough to offer this reconciliation, this outstretched hand of friendship, after all these years? And if Edgeworth had changed, how had everyone else?

"Four years ago, and two years ago, you asked me to trust you. Now I ask that you return the favour. So I will say it again, and this time I want an answer. Why are you cutting yourself off from the world?"

The problem, Phoenix thought, was that it was difficult to utter a coherent answer.

At least that hadn't changed.

The difference was, Phoenix could look enigmatic now, even when he was saying nothing at all.

(If the frustration on Edgeworth's face was anything to go by.)

Let me help you, Edgeworth was asking.

(Let me help you, Maya had nearly begged.)

"Trust," Phoenix said slowly, a conversation from years ago slipping into the forefront of his mind.

"Wright -"

"Edgeworth," Phoenix interrupted, "I have a case."

This stopped him short. "WHAT?"

"An unofficial case," Phoenix clarified quickly. "The only other person I've told about this is Iris, so it's a secret, too."

Edgeworth raised his eyebrows. "Iris?"

Phoenix mirrored him. "Does that really surprise you?"

Edgeworth looked like he wanted to say that it did, but he restrained this impulse and waited for Phoenix to finish.

"Well, this shouldn't be a surprise. I want to know who framed me." Phoenix paused. "Well I know who it is. Iris helped with that, actually. I was visiting her, and the person had been keeping an eye on me, so he went as well. I don't think he could get close to anyone else who's close to me."

Edgeworth scoffed, then stilled. Abruptly, he asked, "Why me?"

"Hm?"

"That's why you're hardly talking to Maya any longer. Her position is shaky," he said, surprising Phoenix with the depth of his knowledge, though the knowledge itself had been swirling around in his mind for a long time, "and you're the one who cleared her. Iris is safe in prison, and she's not really in a position to be much of a threat. You haven't let anyone else close, so why tell me?"

Phoenix looked at Edgeworth for a long time.

"Someone once told me that trust is like a chain, and is only as long as its weakest link. I trust you to stay safe." He smiled, a little unwillingly. "I definitely don't trust Maya to do that." Forcing himself, without much difficulty, to take this seriously, again, he said, "And I want you to trust me. Is it really that hard?"

No matter how far a person flees, the past is always like their shadow: following effortlessly on the heels of the runner.

"Yes," Edgeworth shot back. "I leave the country, and you've fallen off a bridge into a deep river..."

Turn your head when you've travelled one thousand miles, and the shadow will still be there, so if you reach out a hand, it will reach out in response.

"...I turn my back for a moment, and you've been stripped of your badge..."

Remember, for a moment longer, that just as they were shaped by chance or design... so, too, did many lives ripple when their paths crossed with other people's.

"...I work with Interpol for a few months, and you've become like I used to be. Alone. You don't live in vacuum, Wright. Something's going to happen."

"It won't be because of me," Phoenix said firmly.

Edgeworth frowned at him.

There was something going on in Edgeworth's head that Phoenix couldn't read. A problem being considered. A decision made. A conclusion reached.

"All right," Edgeworth sighed, finally. "Tell me about the case."

- : -

Although Edgeworth did not interfere, Phoenix never went a year without seeing him again.

Phoenix wasn't sure what to think about this.

- : -

And then Edgeworth brought up an old system that had been shelved years back.

- : -

**TBC**

_R & R, please_


	10. The True Meaning of Sacrifice

**The events, so far  
**April 8, 2013: _WOE 6_, a nice college night out with Phoenix, Iris, and their stalker  
April 11, 2013: State vs. Wright (first time)  
January 31, 2019: _WOE 5_, a look into Iris's life after State vs. Wright  
February 6-9, 2019: State vs. Iris  
February 7, 2019: _WOE 7_, the events of Misty Fey's murder  
March 14, 2019: _WOE 3_, Phoenix's first visit to Iris in prison  
April 29, 2019: State vs. Enigmar; Phoenix is disbarred  
February 14, 2021: _WOE 8_, a not-so-normal day for Iris in prison  
July 5, 2023: _WOE 9,_ Phoenix and Edgeworth have a little talk  
**August 16, 2023: **_**WOE 10**_**, TBA  
**November 31, 2023: _WOE 2_, when Trucy met Iris  
April - October, 2026: Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice  
December 31, 2026: _WOE 4_, a night out with Phoenix, Iris, and their TWO stalkers  
June 11, 2027: _WOE 1_, Iris introspection, the dinner party

* * *

**Walking On Eggshells  
**10. The True Meaning of Sacrifice

_March 22nd 2013  
& August 16th 2023_

- : -

"I've been waiting for you, Maya."

"Oh?"

"Mr. Edgeworth... he talked to me."

"Oh."

"I'll try to help you, if I can."

"If you can?"

"Phoenix won't talk to me."

"Really. I thought it was just me. And Pearl. Just the people who have been worried about him."

"Maya..."

"Sorry, Iris. I'm just... upset. Nick can be so DUMB sometimes."

"He cares about you."

"I know, I know. It's just... do you know why?"

Silence.

"Iris, if you know, tell me."

Silence.

"Iris."

Silence.

"IRIS."

"It's not my secret to tell."

"So we're talking about secrets now?"

Maya hears a sigh of frustration. This is a sound she would never have expected from Iris of all people, but the person you see outside of prison isn't necessarily the person who appears on the inside.

"Maya," Iris says, and she's sad, "everyone has secrets. Even him... especially him, now."

Maya's sitting across from her, hands laid flat against the surface. She'd been leaning forwards, little by little, since the beginning of the conversation, fingers pressing in with her pent-up frustration.

Maya says, "I know that."

"Then... then let him have his secrets," Iris counters quietly. She's trembling, though, vibrating with the effort it takes to hold it in. It's like she's a balloon, swelling rapidly while helium is pumped in, visibly tensing. It makes Maya wonder how Iris kept her act up for so long, so successfully.

Maya tells herself that it's a good thing that she did. This doesn't stop her from feeling bitter, because Iris saved his life with one hand and broke his heart with the other.

Maya leans back, surveying the cousin-in-blood who has been gifted with all of the beauty of their family, but none of the skill; with all of the theoretical learning, but none of the power. She is not sure whether envy should be clogging her throat or not, and which lot in life she would prefer to have been slated to receive. Maya IS sure she should not be questioning this way - ride a mile on a man's bicycle before judging his life. Or something like that. Maya is not certain of the actual metaphor.

Pearl is visiting Morgan again. Maya would not have left her, but this is a meeting she has to have alone - no point worrying the baby cousin (though she's growing up too quickly) with an issue like this. The problem is, Pearl is as acutely aware of Phoenix's sudden lack of contact as Maya, and isn't really handling it well either.

Maya pulls out the big guns.

"Pearl misses him," she says, and wishes that Iris didn't look quite so stricken because of something Maya said.

Hadn't she promised Phoenix when she took her position, though he would never have asked, not to become like the other Masters?

"I... I know," is Iris's quiet reply, surprising Maya at her sudden regression.

Iris has not been quite this timid for years.

Not for a long time.

The lights shift. Maya wonders if Iris is surveying her the way Maya does.

Maya hates this new habit, but she hasn't been able to kick it - surveying people.

Maya never hated before this either, but she thinks she might understand the word better now.

Running a family is not a simple task, by any measure.

There is precisely one member of the main branch of the Fey Clan still alive.

One is such a lonely number.

Two's not much better, but that's the number of Fey Clan members who are actually close to the main family who are still free.

Maya and Pearl. Sisters in all but blood, and they're halfway there already, as cousins; the big one and the little, like a perfectly matched set of two halves. Except it's Iris who is Pearl's real sister, the woman that Pearl comes to see once every few months, and it keeps both sisters from becoming too lonely.

Sometimes, Pearl comes to the prison and visits Morgan instead.

Iris comforts her afterwards.

Maya doesn't envy this bond, at least. Pearl adores her. She is reminded of this every time Pearl comes to her crying, comes to her smiling, comes to her with new acolytes and old ones returning to a new-old way of life that's been revived at last. She is reminded that Pearl adores her every time the girl tries to set her up with Phoenix - although the attempts have been waning, recently.

Maya suppresses a pang in her chest when she thinks of her best friend.

Maya's family has fallen to pieces around her. There is such darkness there, but she clings to them all the same, and Phoenix is as close as family.

Maya can't manage him, like she's been forced to manage the (remains of) family of two-and-a-hundred, and the village that has grown up around them, but still.

Maya never thought she would grow tired, when she has such a core of bright energy, but sometimes, when dusk is falling, she has to rummage and poke deep inside her to make sure the fire is still burning. It is exhausting balancing the two halves of herself. She thinks wryly, sometimes, that she is finally understanding how Mia must have felt, oscillating constantly between vengeance for the past and hopes for the future, but this must be more than even Mia felt.

Maya has always liked being special, but this way is not it.

Light, not dark, she thinks.

Maya reminds herself that she should not become like the people who have crumbled - like her family of two corners, a misshapen polygon because most of the corners are dead, or locked away.

Maya hates this too.

"Maya," Mia said once, "don't be like me. Don't hate."

Mia had taken on the burden of hating. She is gone now, and it's up to Maya to both hate and not-hate.

Mia's real requests had always been difficult, in their core, to follow.

Maya is only twenty-three and she is... well, she has to make an effort to stop being tired.

Maya doesn't hate the village itself, though it's what makes her so tired. She loves it. Really. It's just hard. There are two close Fey Clan members living in Kurain. There are one hundred others, which remind her, and Pearl, that everyone else is gone.

Pearl can take refuge with Iris.

Maya can't. Not anywhere. Not since Phoenix stopped speaking to them.

Maya will not let him, even if Iris is surprisingly timid once again.

"He hasn't spoken to us with months," Maya says, resuming their conversation.

"I... I heard," murmurs Iris.

"Iris," Maya tells her quietly, "please. We have to see him. I have to see him, or talk to him."

Her cousin closes her eyes. "He... he's not talking to me, either."

This is why, then. Maya's (hated) skill at reading people reminds her of a secret.

Iris grew more confident with each of Phoenix's visits.

He is not visiting now, and Iris is hesitating, although she has not yet stuttered.

Maya leans back, frowning, hearing her chains of beads click with the slight movement. A single question escapes her lips. "Why?"

Iris is quiet. Maya is on the verge of repeating the question, when her cousin answers, "I think he knows Mr. Edgeworth talked to me."

Should Maya be dismayed that so many people seem to have more influence on Phoenix than she does, now?

"He thinks he would listen to you," surmises Maya. "Nick thinks that, if he visits, you would convince him to talk."

A sigh, on the other side of the glass. It is not so faint that Maya cannot hear it. "He's wrong."

"Iris," Maya says slowly, "I thought you said you would help us."

Iris shakes her head. "I would help. But I... I couldn't convince him of so much, years back. I have no idea why he thinks things would change now."

Maya frowns, sceptical. "He would sacrifice your company to keep you safe?"

"He would sacrifice yours," Iris answers, and bites her lip, though it's like locking the doors after thieves have already come and gone.

- : -

It seemed oddly fitting that spring had arrived early.

Iris didn't know much about it, of course, and Phoenix had laughed when she twirled with abandon beneath blooming Sakura blossoms.

It had been a mistake, because he had joined her there, a hand around hers. Ignoring the soft gasp of her surprise, he let her spin, petals falling in a thick crush onto the red of her hair.

One week later, and Iris could still feel her heart speed up at the memory.

Dahlia would call her a fool, Iris thought. For the first time, the thought did not pain her.

The petals were long gone, except for the special niche in her memories. He had become part of so many of her firsts that even if she did not love him, which she didn't, she would reflect fondly - perhaps sadly - on the past months for the rest of her life. They would be like treasured keepsakes, a warm wind and spark of green life among the ice and snow of her retreat.

Although Iris did not love him, she had still woken up early, and she had cooked a surprise.

"Th-this is for you."

His eyes were clear and blue. They refracted light like gems, but there was none of the frigidness Iris would have expected to see.

They had lit up with the rest of his face at her parting gift.

His eyes were coloured like ice. Iris wasn't cold.

She bathed in the brilliant warmth of his smile. Parasol held delicately over one shoulder with her free hand, and a sundress to celebrate spring slipped over the tense lines of her body, she could not help but return his beam with one of her own.

"What is it?"

"I... I saw your fridge," Iris murmured, pushing the box into his waiting hands. "It was shocking."

"The blue furry alien creatures from Mars or the potato that seems to have sprouted?"

"Feenie," she chided, "you shouldn't leave food for that long."

Phoenix shrugged, ever so casual. It had shocked Iris - the ease with which he faced life, calm among the world of rapidly shifting colours. Iris had been knocked over by the sheer volume of movement outside of Hazakura.

Phoenix had not.

Phoenix had stood right behind her, an arm around her shoulders, and murmuring for her to stay standing, and that he wouldn't let her fall over.

Iris had resolved to do Phoenix some favour in return. She was growing to care about him, as a friend, at the very least.

Weren't friends supposed to catch you if you fell?

She returned the first part of her favour as a present, an offering to ward against a second round of the food poisoning that had left him white for days.

"Omelettes," Iris explained, while he opened the box and peered inside.

"Mini-omelettes," corrected Phoenix, with a teasing grin.

"It's only enough for one lunch, but you said you were going out for dinner, and visiting a friend for the next two days."

A strange look crossed Phoenix's face. "I'll have to finish these treasures first, or Larry might steal them from me."

Iris shook her head, fondly. "You can't compliment them yet. You haven't even tasted them."

Phoenix wasn't looking at her.

"Thank you," he said quietly, "for caring."

Such comments had made her feel warm just a week ago, like standing beneath a stream of sunlight on a clear morning.

Her teeth sank into the flesh of her bottom lip. She was glad he wasn't looking.

"You... you sound like no one's ever... done you a..." she trailed off.

"Iris?"

"Like no one's done you a favour before," admitted Iris, twirling the parasol nervously, caught between warm blue, and a net of safety.

There was that strange look, again.

"Someone has," Phoenix said, seriously. "I want to repay him."

Iris stared at the pavement. She could talk, she told herself. She was Dahlia, and Dahlia was brave.

"I'm sure you'll succeed," Iris told the ink of his shadow.

He didn't reply.

When she finally lifted her head, curiosity so strong it nearly rang in her teeth, he had leaned over. His face was so near she could smell his aftershave.

She was too surprised by his closeness to jump.

She was too surprised by how comfortable she was with this to jump.

He looked like he was searching for something in her face, with the wary eyes of someone who, despite his protests, hadn't received many favours at all. Someone who would remember favours - and repay them accordingly.

"But... won't studying law be hard when you have this?"

Phoenix stared a little longer. Apparently, he found what he had sought, because his arms closed around her - gently, like she was a wisp and would be blown away if he was too close - and he leaned forwards. His lips brushed the shell of her ear, but not because he wanted to kiss her.

"There's someone I want to save," murmured Phoenix, low and steady.

When he drew back, Iris saw his face.

Hope. Determination. Strength. Characteristics that Iris had always admired, always envied her sister for, but had never really seen wrapped by the strange tenderness.

The whistle for the train struck, beginning a flurry of movement across the station. Iris thought of the weight of her ticket, and she did not move from his embrace.

"Thank you for believing in me," Phoenix murmured, and Iris knew then what he had been looking for.

She understood the strange tenderness that had been growing ever more strongly on his face at every meeting - the sort that wrapped the fiery emotions in gentleness.

She remembered the excitement on his face when they met, and how she was slowly beginning to feel the same.

She remembered the long walks around campus, and around the city, as he introduced her to life outside - the laughter, the jokes.

She remembered dancing just one week back, Sakura blossoms tumbling off red braids to litter the ground, and laughing after the gasp when he joined in.

She thought of the omelette still in his hands.

The realisation had hit. She recognised that tender look now, because it took one to know one.

Despite the compromises she had reached with her mother, the bargains with her sister, the schemes she had taken part in, she hadn't known until now what the word sacrifice really meant, as it ground into her soul, a soft strain of music just out of reach.

Iris had never been warmer, and she had never wished more that she could freeze over.

Because she was falling in love with him.

And as she boarded the train for a weekend to Hazakura, watching his figure fade away, Iris knew the true meaning of sacrifice.

- : -

Maya sighs. "He can be so stupid sometimes." Her eyes turn jarringly mournful. "You're both like that. You know the true meaning of sacrifice, but not at the right time. If I could talk to him, I would..." She trails off because she cannot think of a frightening enough threat. Perhaps spend a month with Trucy, and teach the little girl all her tricks? "Nick can be SUCH a fool."

Iris lifts her eyes.

Their gazes lock.

Iris murmurs a soft, "Oh," and Maya knows she has realised.

Maya, too, knows the true meaning of sacrifice.

Iris says the next words like she's been struck by lightning.

"You... you're in love with him."

Maya doesn't deny it.

Maya thinks of being two among one hundred, of being a village in the middle of nowhere.

She is watching. Always watching. It's becoming difficult not to hate, so she's not going to let go of the anchor of Phoenix Wright. Not this easily.

The problem is with Phoenix.

Phoenix is in love with Iris. Not Maya.

And Maya will not dwell on it, because she can't afford to. She will search for his friendship, but she has Pearl to consider. She will try and manage the part of him that belongs to her, but she has a village on her back. She will think about this, but Maya will not let herself hate.

"Are you ever going to tell him?" Iris asks quietly.

Maya smiles at the uncanny ability to get to the centre of the issue.

"Will you get him to talk to me?"

Iris hesitates. It's slight, but it's there. But she says, "Yes," because Iris is not a cruel person. "I'll try."

But her eyes are still questioning.

Maya closes her eyes and answers the question. "No. Not unless you hurt him again."

Maya, too, understands the true meaning of sacrifice.

- : -

**TBC**

_R & R, please_

* * *

A/N: Two-thirds of the story is over, folks! This is the chapter I have most been looking forward to writing. Actually, it's a combination of the TWO chapters I've really wanted to write (the flashback, and the Iris & Maya interaction), so maybe the scene in chapter one between Phoenix and Maya, and chapter two between Phoenix and Iris, make more sense now. And yes, this revelation is the main reason I included the chapter about State vs. Wright in Maya's POV. I'm not really satisfied I did Maya justice, or the depth of her relationship with Phoenix. Comments?


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